Meh, I am a firm believer in at least 1 standard, core database - and for me, that has always been PEQ. I believe their efforts to make a most-live-like database has worked perfectly, even if they do not release updates in a nice, clean packaged manner every 2 hours. :/ We had 2 or more "main" databases before, and while they both offered great content, it was often very confusing to try and "merge" them together. PEQ => Cavedude's. Then, Angelox made a database which became the next major step in a complete, live-like database. Cavedudes was merged into PEQ more or less, and is no longer required as a separate source of info.
To a newcomer, having all these different databases can be overwhelming. Whatever the end result, having ONE STABLE CORE database really needs to be our goal. No matter how "controls" it, no matter who "developed" it. You start splintering things here, we are no better than the WoWSpasm project, where every one is a dev, everyone is a db engineer, and every server is teh ubar shiznit best server/db on the planez.
I like CORE. Custom is that; custom. But 9 times out of 10, admins do not release their custom db's because it's theirs. I'd hate to end up seeing 20 custom EQEmu databases because everyone learned the term "fork" (which I think you actually mean branch, but ok
).