Goal: Making KDE software the #1 choice for science and academia

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 30. Aug 2017, at 22:09, Alexander Neundorf <neundorf at kde.org> wrote:
> 
> On 2017 M08 30, Wed 16:20:07 CEST Luca Beltrame wrote:
> ...
>> In fact I think it would be worthwhile to present such options. I've
>> seen KDE software used in places I did not expect (e.g. a research
>> institute in agrobiology I visited a few years ago).
>> 
>> That said, I think it would be also a good idea to see "what makes our
>> software palatable for R&A" (which is potential reason 2 in your Phab
>> task). At least in my field (bioinformatics) most do not even know it
>> exists.
> 
> Maybe most of them are using Windows ?
> The full proposal also mentions Plasma, which basically means we would not 
> only try to get them to use KDE applications, but also to switch their OS to 
> Linux...
> So, does this goal include supporting Windows as a first class target platform 
> ?

Excellent point!
I’d clearly say yes, it should also support Windows as a target platform!
As I said in the proposal, I had wanted to use Kile and RKWard on my Windows machine at the university (which I could not switch to Linux because of institute policy) but I couldn’t because it was too difficult for me to make them run there.
So providing better Windows support for the scientific apps we have would certainly be a valuable goal.

I have now added

  - Make sure that our relevant applications are easy to find and install on Windows, since many researchers and students are still locked into Windows

to the possible solutions for reason 2