Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/OpenInfo

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was delete. -- ( drini's page ☎ ) 02:09, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] OpenInfo

As a GIS professional, I've never heard of this company. The article doesn't give any reason why it's notable, nor do Google search results or Alexa. This looks merely like an advertisement.—--Aude (talk | contribs) 15:02, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

See also: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/OpenGCL —Quarl (talk) 2006-01-12 19:24Z
  • Delete or maybe Speedy delete. per nom. —--Aude (talk | contribs) 15:03, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment. This was listed here this morning and then inexplicably removed by 165.154.136.7. —--Aude (talk | contribs) 18:36, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Please note that there are stringent criteria for speedy deletion -- and this doesn't fit in any of them. Also if it did you could have just tagged it for speedy deletion. —Quarl (talk) 2006-01-11 20:22Z
  • This is not an advertisement. It is a serious article about a company that has a better product than ESRI or MapInfo. Please do not stifle Canadian ingenuity just because you haven't heard of something. If you worked for an IT department in any Ontario municipality, then you would have heard of this company and its products. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.154.136.7 (talk • contribs)
  • Delete per nom. Mike 19:18, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete as non-notable corporation. Also Googling for "openinfo" gives someone else as the first hit. —Quarl (talk) 2006-01-11 20:20Z
  • Weak delete, notability not established. I work at Claritas in the USA and our veteran GIS experts (skilled with ArcInfo, MapInfo, etc) aren't familiar with OpenInfo. Google search shows that this Canadian company exists but so does an apparently unrelated UK company, and none of the other first-page hits show any evidence of notability such as major media coverage. I'll change my vote if it can be demonstrated that this is more notable than "just another aspiring software firm." Barno 21:26, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Response OpenInfo is specifically holding back any major publicity or details of its products so that competitors will not have a chance to steal ideas. OpenGCL is something radically different than anything else on the market today. 165.154.136.7 21:59, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
  • OpenInfo is also currently working on a DRM project with some major players in Spain and Korea.
    • Response to Response -- That's as may be, but it also means that it's done nothing of any interest to the outside world until such time as it makes its announcement. I can think of only one company that did that and would be worth consideration, and that would be Transmeta (and for all that, mainly because of who they hired). Delete until the product is, you know, a product. At least. Haikupoet 03:06, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. If it's not published somewhere, how could an encyclopedia know about it? —Quarl (talk) 2006-01-12 19:33Z
  • Delete I work in an IT department in Ontario (20 years) and I have never heard of Openinfo. delete as per nom. Atrian 04:30, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Atrian: No offense, but you're a database administrator. There's many things you haven't heard of, even related to databases. For example, can you explain to me the inner workings of an R-Tree, and of a Quad-Tree, and what the differences are, in which situation one would use either one of those. Oh, and once you're done that, explain to me how you would go about implementing those two structures if you were writing your own RDBMS? (OpenInfo has developed their own implementations, BTW)165.154.136.7 16:22, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Please refrain from personal attacks. —Quarl (talk) 2006-01-12 19:33Z
Comment -- Lemme splain something to you. Wikipedia is not a promotional venue, and badgering people to change their vote on something that is by your own admission vaporware is a good way to annoy people. Who do you think you are, Duke Nukem Forever? Haikupoet 19:08, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

THIS IS A PERSONAL ATTACK, HAIKUPOET This is NOT VAPOURWARE. This is a product worth Billions of dollars in sales potential (currently selling in the millions of dollars). Who do you think you are, Narrowminded Forever? 165.154.136.7 23:15, 12 January 2006 (UTC)



  • Some people have said "I haven't heard of it", but that usually isn't strictly a valid reason we delete articles, but it is a big hint if nobody has heard of it. Since OpenInfo is a company, and OpenGCL is its product, the two fall under the notability requirements of WP:CORP. Can you give us any verifiable evidence that the company or its product meets any of the criteria listed at WP:CORP? —Quarl (talk) 2006-01-12 19:33Z
Comment. Below is discussion from Talk:List of GIS software that further reasons why the company is not-notable (beyond "I never heard of it"). Extensive search on Google, Alexa, Yahoo!, and trade publications/websites (including Canadian websites) comes up empty, in regards to OpenInfo. This also means that, I was unable to verify anything. And thanks, Quarl, for pointing us to WP:CORP, for more guidelines on notability. —--Aude (talk | contribs) 19:55, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
'''Yes. I disagree with your deletion of OpenInfo's 
OpenGCL product.  This product has all the functionality, 
and more, of ArcIMS, and is a direct competitor.  The 
Canadian Government has contributed significant 
investments into this product as well, and it is 
being heavily promoted and used by Ontario 
municipalities.   It is set to become the standard 
for Canadian GIS engines.

Traditionally, Canadian companies have had a much 
harder time competing than US companies.  This is 
because of attitudes from people such as yourselves, 
who feel that if it is not American, or European, that 
it is not worth listing.''' {{unsigned|165.154.136.7}}

:Please, no [[WP:ATTACK|personal attacks]]!  I don't 
care if a product is American, Canadian, European, 
or what.  There are plenty of 'notable' Canadian GIS 
products, such as [[Safe Software]], or [[PCI Geomatics]] 
software products, etc., that don't have articles on Wikipedia.  
[[OpenInfo]] isn't even listed on 
http://ca.dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Scientific/Geography/Geographic_Information_Systems__GIS_/, 
or on [http://www.directionsmag.com/companies/], 
for example.  Please see [[WP:NOT|What Wikipedia is not]], 
and [[Wikipedia:Vanity guidelines|Vanity guidelines]] for 
more details on Wikipedia policies. Thanks. 
--Kmf164 15:56, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Look, I'll try to make this simple. It has nothing at all to do with Canada. If OpenGCL is not vaporware, it's a vertical market product with extremely narrow penetration. Such a thing is not something anyone's likely to look up on Wikipedia, or indeed anywhere except the manufacturer's website. Arguing that it's potentially worth billions of dollars -- well, I could say the same thing about Linux I guess. Wouldn't make it a terribly useful thing to say. Honestly, Mr. Mystery IP, if you hang around Articles for Deletion for any great length of time you're sure to find a couple of people who are trying to make exactly the same sort of case you're trying to make to keep an article, with almost exactly the same methods and arguments. People doing that seem to labor under the assumption that somehow they'll find the magic combination of arguments that will get them accepted into Wikipedia (as if Wikipedia recognition is some kind of elite fraternity), and keep going at it, and going at it, and going at it without realizing that they aren't in the best position to make the case in the first place. Fact is, it's easy to make such assertions about the value and use of a product, but when there's no independently verifiable facts about a product, and only the slimmest of verifiable information about the company that makes it, such an assertion is worth approximately nothing in an encyclopedic context. IMHO it's not only a battle you have no hope of winning, it's a battle you had no business fighting in the first place. (I mean, I don't get any mention at all of your product even on Usenet, which means one of two things: either you don't have a very large community of customers, or you have them all NDAed to death, a rather strange thing for a product which claims to be "open". Either way, not enough people know what it is that it belongs on Wikipedia.) Haikupoet 06:53, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete per nom. Stifle 16:55, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per WP:AUTO, WP:VAIN, WP:WEB, WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV and various sundry concerns raised above. Usefy if he wants it (but an indef block suggests that may be moot). Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] AfD? 23:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.