[R] R for commercial use

[S Ellison]

> cool, im none the wiser now, but thanks anyway
That would be because your IT questionnaire requires telepathy to understand what the writer wanted to know.

My take on these, in case it helps:

1. Is R a Clientsoftware / Serversoftware / Systemsoftware? 
R can run both on a client or on a server.  
However, it is normally installed on a client machine in the same way as Word, Excel, Gimp etc. If you intend to install it on a desktop I suggest the answer 'client'

2. Does R need a "chellenge-response" treatment for activation? 
No

3. Is R proxy-able? 
R can access the internet through a proxy. Usually installing usint the Internet2 option lets R work through Windows' existing proxy setup.

4. Is the personalised WINDOWS-NTLM-authorization at ISA-proxy possible? 
I have no idea why any sensible IT staff would expect an end user to be able to answer this question. I deduce your IT staff are not sensible. Further, this refers to a LAN security protocol that authenticates client-server interactions (badly, I assume, as even microsoft no longer recommend it). 
I suggest you answer 'N/A' because that authentication should be handled by client-server networking protocols and not by R


5. Are any exceptions for virus scanner needed? If yes, which ones? 
Not usually; R does not trigger antivirus alerts unless the antivirus software is making mistakes. That happened once to my knowledge.

6. Does R changes system files or folders? (e.g. system32, registry). If yes, which ones? 
R's installation process adds the R version to the registry and associates .Rdata files with R via the usual registry mechanism. You can tell it not to do that. Further, if it fails to do so for permission reasons R will still run normally. 
I pefer to get our admin staff to install R as administrators to get the registry properly updated, and I also ask them to grant write permission to the R subdirectory in the program files directory so that R can install contributed packages there. But that is not essential; R can install packages in user space instead if permission is not granted for program files space.

Of course if a user uses R to read and write from the system areas, then of course it can change files there; byt that is equally true of word, excel etc.



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