Bottomline - mysql has a lot of marketshare, is improving, and I'm sure that it'll eventually be a credible product. But right now it's has a wide range of inexcusable problems.
I so totally agree with you.
I find that mysql promotes bad coding practices by ignoring errors and substituting invalid data with factory defaults. If it complained when an obvious error occured (like inserting an invalid date or saying "I can't fit this data in this column") it would be easy to find the bug ; instead it shows up months later in creepy ways when you realize part of your data was truncated, or otherwise screwed up in quite imaginative ways, and you have to fix the damn thing by hand, burning your eyes on phpmyadmin screens.
Also most of the interesting features are in the Beta 5.0 !
I find it ironic that it's the biggest open source database while there are a lot of really free alternatives like firebird or postgres, which have all the good features Right Now, and which Just Work. There is also a lot of marketing hype and frankly I have no trust at all in a company which was making public statements like "Who needs foreign keys ?" just because their product didnot supports them, then when it supports them, changing their PR to match.
More info at http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html buck
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