How to distribute this software? (10 minutes)

Below are two cases where a researcher comes to you with a description of software they have created and that they would like to distribute. Your challenge is to pick one and figure out what to advise them on how best to get the software in the hands of its audience. Which questions would you ask to get to the bottom of things?

Case 1: The Solar Solution

Shamash is a senior researcher who leads a group. He shows up one day to ask for advice on distributing some software that a junior researcher in his group has created. He says: "One of my people has made an amazing application for calculating where you can best put solar panels, and how much energy they will produce. We think there are lots of researchers studying the energy transition and working on solutions, and they should all use our program because it's just so great. We're submitting a paper on solar panels in the province next week, but how do we make the code available?"

Case 2: The Miracle Model

Marina is a young historian who studies historical natural disasters, who sends an email to ask for advice. She writes:

Dear research software support,

I've been researching historical flood events in The Netherlands, and how they have affected politics and the economy. It's a fascinating topic that is also highly relevant today, as climate change-induced sea level rise is going to put low-lying areas around the world at risk of flooding.

I actually have a background in economics, so unlike most of my colleagues in the humanities I've tried to take a quantitative approach, which is quite difficult because we don't have much data and floods are quite rare. I've been working with a statistician who specialises in rare events and we've modified some of the existing techniques a bit to work better for this case, and we got some really good results.

We submitted a paper some time ago, and now I've been asked to share the code. I don't know how to do that though. Can you help me?

Thanks in advance,

Marina