Consider referencing miniforge for conda in readme

[williamhobbs]

In the Installation and Usage section of the readme (https://github.com/NREL/OpenOA/?tab=readme-ov-file#installation-and-usage), Anaconda is strongly recommended. But Anaconda appears to require a paid license for commercial use at businesses with more than 200 employees (https://www.anaconda.com/pricing), which could be a problem for many wind plant owners/operators.

I recommend at least mentioning the option of miniforge (https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge), which provides Conda with a regular BSD-3 license and access to the conda-forge channel.

I have found that ambiguous licenses (like with Anaconda) can be a barrier to businesses adopting open-source tools (like Python packages that recommend/require conda), and miniforge seems like a good solution, although it took me seemingly way too long to find.

[RHammond2]

@williamhobbs thanks for the feedback! This isn't something we'd realized would be an issue, but can happily point users towards mini-forge.

[williamhobbs]

Sure thing! For what it’s worth, I think Anaconda’s license changed sometime in the last few years, so this seems to be a relatively new consideration.

[RHammond2]

I just opened #295 to address this concern, and would like to know if those changes are adequate from your perspective, or if more information would be helpful.

[williamhobbs]

That works for me. I don’t necessarily have an opinion on which versions of Anaconda should or should not be recommended, but pointing out that users should check the license and can consider miniforge is good. Thanks!

[RHammond2]

Thanks for the quick reply! I'll consider this closed until the update is released, and close it at that time.