What the Heck is a "Whitepaper"?

And isn't most paper white?

Whitepapers, whitepapers, whitepapers. Theses days, everybody has whitepapers. Or, more accuately, everyone has to have whitepapers, to the point that the term is in danger of becoming meaningless.

(Technically, a whitepaper is "a government report, or an authoritative report on a major issue, as by a team of journalists," as defined by dictionary.com. When upFront.eZine Publishing launched its **ahem** whitepaper division, we called it upFront.reSearch, because we produce documents based on research.)

The PR Web pages of the CAD industry are filled with whitepapers, whose definition, I think, has degraded to "formally-worded, multi-page advertisements." These are produced by two methods: (1) the CAD vendors write them in-house; or (2) the CAD vendors hire firms to write the documents for them, which are then touted as being independently-produced. I say, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

There, now I've gotten that off my chest...

Comments

[Rachael Taggart]

Ralph
I agree with you on all counts. Most vendor-pulished whitepapers are nothing more than costly marketing pieces. They are completed because no company can sell into large-sized users without having this as collateral.

I have to say, though, that the occasional independent white paper (by CPDA or Cyon as an example) can be very very valuable and should not be regarded in the same way.
rach