Differentiating different Open Source databases

An opinion I often run across when talking to database people who haven't dealt with Postgres is "open source databases aren't very good". In all cases I've seen, this opinion was formed because they looked at or used a certain open source database and indeed found things that could certainly cause serious issues. These opinions were formed from legitimate deficiencies, and because they were in an open source database these folks had made the unreasonable assumption that all OSS databases just weren't very good.

Fortunately, it's never been hard for me to enlighten these folks, first by admitting that "Yes, that is a problem with that database" and second by pointing out that not all OSS databases are the same. So I'm wondering if there's some way that we can *proactively* get that message out on a larger scale.

Some might point out that these folks are just reaching unreasonable conclusions, and I agree. I also would agree that these people *should* understand that just like commercial databases aren't all the same, neither are all OSS databases. However, that *is* the conclusion they're reaching, and not just because they're closed-minded or anti-OSS. Based on how easy it's been for me to enlighten them, I don't think it would be hard to change this unfair bias; it would probably only take a single prominent article to do it.
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Jim "Decibel!" Nasby jnasby(at)EnovaFinancial(dot)com
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