It is funny this kind of came full circle. Damien Katz, the original CouchDB author was working on Lotus Notes as some point in his life. After many years, his "creation" comes back to IBM. There is some irony in there I think.

I remember him disavowing CouchDB and urging everyone to "ride with him" towards Couchbase. There were promises about how CouchDB will get contributions from Couchbase, and how it will get RPM and packaging scripts, docs and continued help. But not much of that happened. The community split. Most CouchDB developers who ended up on the other side of the fense at Couchbase didn't end up committing or helping that much over the years. So I can't see, looking back, anything good at all about that split.

But Cloudant sort of took over helping and watching over CouchDB. Quite a few of the contributors work for CouchDB, and they are very smart and helpful individuals. I hope this means good news for CouchDB as a project. I would want to see it grow.