Good find. I don't see how this keeps OCaml "from being a first choice for server-side development" while making it an acceptable language for client-side development, though.
There are a several hackish polymorphic print implementations, but the best solution so far seems to be the "deriving" camlp4 extension (http://code.google.com/p/deriving/wiki/Introduction). This looks pretty good:
type 'a tree = Leaf of 'a | Branch of 'a tree * 'a * 'a tree
deriving (Show)
type point = { x : float; y : float }
deriving (Show)
let points = Branch (Leaf {x=0.0;
y=0.0;},
{x=2.0; y=2.0},
Branch (Leaf {x=1.0; y=1.0},
{x=1.0; y=0.0},
Leaf {x=0.0; y=1.0}))
Show.show<point tree> points
=>
"Branch
(Leaf {x =0.; y =0.}, {x =2.; y =2.},
Branch
(Leaf {x =1.; y =1.}, {x =1.; y =0.}, Leaf {x =0.; y =1.}))"
http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/when-polymorphism-fails
Note that like many of the alleged deficiencies of OCaml, this was a compromise for performance.