R help - Apr 2016 - how to donate software to R community

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
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

> 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