The best description of Lotus Notes I ever heard was "It's like using Microsoft Access with VBA as your email client and calendar". (Plus random forms and "applications" that should have been on the web instead.)
I built notes database applications a while back in may career. It’s kinda a no sql data store with clunky front end (cross platform as mentioned elsewhere) and lotus script.
After working in it for a while I’d start to notice the Notes email and calendar are just specialized notes applications. It’s not the best..
You were retrofit your idea back to one of the integrated idea sharing platform, with security, ease of programming (by user and not IT guys like us) … I still do not see any close to it thing even today.
