[R] how to donate software to R community

[Marc Schwartz]

> On Apr 27, 2016, at 11:37 PM, WU Qingwei <gokeii at 163.com> wrote:
> 
> hi all,
> 
> 
> We have developed a software called HCBA (Highly Consumable Business Analytics) using R as modelling engine.
> We now want to donate the whole software (R serves only as modelling engine in this project. There are other core functions.) to the R community and open-source it. But we don't know what the approach is in order to contribute HCBA.
> We have looked through the official R website. And there seems to be no information about this subject. By R package way, we can only contribute the R part of HCBA.
> So, our question is: what should we do to contribute HCBA to R community?
> Any suggestions and opinions would be much appreciated. Thank you.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Best Regards,
> WU Qingwei
> School of Software Engineering, Tongji University


Hi,

Thanks for your query and your willingness to contribute.

There are a variety of ways to make your open source software available to the community at large, with arguably the primary way for third parties to do that via CRAN:

  https://cran.r-project.org

There are various policies in place to meet the CRAN requirements:

  https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html

and presumably, you are already aware of the Writing R Extensions manual, which also has related information:

  https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-exts.html

Lastly, there is also a dedicated e-mail list, R-Package-Devel, which you may find helpful in the course of meeting CRAN requirements, should you elect to pursue that path:

  https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel

Note that given the various dependencies you allude to above, relative to R versus other parts of your offering, there may be subtle and not so subtle issues that you face with a submission to CRAN. The R-Package-Devel list would be a good forum to engage in more detailed discussions on that point specifically.

Alternative ways to offer the package, if you elect to not pursue the CRAN path formally, would be via your own servers, R-Forge, github or similar vehicles. 

Regards,

Marc Schwartz