Don, I think that it may be premature to call the ethics of the entire MySQL community into question.
At the Gartner conference in Oralndo I met with a couple of folks from NuSphere, the company that is building a variety of enhancements into MySQL (including transactions & improvements in the locking model)
We spoke about benchmarking methodology, and this group, at least, takes the topic _very_ seriously. They talked my ear off about TPC, and the _correct_ (read: expensive) way to run a series of benchmarks. My gut sense is that when their product is ready, we'll finally get to see a real head-to-head, apples-to-apples comparison that we've heretofore lacked.
They seemed genuinely interested in real results, not marketing hype.
