But I have the pleasure today to welcome in this community, the Make Mythical, if I may, dear colleague by now, because we have been collaborating for three years now, Felipe Pereira from the Foundation of Science and Technology in Portugal, and Felipe will be sharing with us the work that we've been doing and how they approached as a funding agency, how they approached the DMP and what were the questions that they had and how we eventually created the template for them, how it works now with the National Funding Projects. So Felipe, thank you very much for accepting our invitation. The floor is yours. Okay. Okay, so first of all, good afternoon to you all. I would like to thank also Ellie and the open air for the invitation. As Ellie referred, my name is Felipe Pereira, and I am a research data manager at the Foundation for Science and Technology, more specifically at FCCN, that is their scientific computing unit. So today, basically, I will take you the opportunity to guide you through the implementation process of our data management plan system. Which is based precisely on Argos. So very briefly and to provide you with some context, FCT is the Portuguese public agency that funds and supports science, technology and innovation in all the scientific domains. It is under the responsibility of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education. And as main objectives to establish Portugal as a global reference in the supported areas and also to ensure that the funded research contributes to the society and also to the economic growth. So, FCCN is the scientific unit of FCT. It has at the moment six technological areas, as you can check in the slide that I'm showing. And one of these areas, that is the last one that is referred there, the knowledge area, is in fact the area that integrates the main activities, resources and also the services that are related with open science. So we have basically a set of services that support publications covering the three open access routes, from Gold, Diamond and Green Access. We have also recently launched a service related to journals in the Repsitories Directory. Cross-wide, we have our National Cree System and also Open Educational Resources. But the service that I would like to highlight today in this presentation is the one that is related in fact with research data management. And it is named as POLIN. So it's the POLIN initiative. So the main objective of this initiative is to promote open science in what concerns research data. For this initiative, we established four important pillars and these pillars are interrelated. So we have first the definition and implementation of research data management policies. Very important in the second place, we have the implementation of services and infrastructures in order to allow the community to practice open science. We also promote communication and training activities to support engagement and the awareness near the community. And finally, whenever possible, we are always aligned with different projects and initiatives. And I can give you here some examples such as European Open Science Cloud, Science Europe and obviously the European Commission. So for this that we are approaching, I would like to cover the two first pillars. So concerning the governance, FCT launched already in 2014 a research data management and sharing policy, which actually consists in a set of recommendations. So the DMP submission is recommended as a good Rdm practice. In the meanwhile, considering the context and the all the initiatives that we can face regarding open science, FCT through FCCN has been working on a revised policy. And this policy has clear principles and requirements. So it is a good practice. And I would also like to share with you some of the requirements. So it is expected that this policy will be launched very soon. Nevertheless, I would like just to share very briefly with you some of the principles and also some of the requirements. So the first principle is in fact to ensure that there's open access to research data in accordance to the premise of the DMP. Also that the fact that the research data management should be considered as an obligation of the grant recipients. And finally that data should be managed according to the fair principles. So for this presentation, I selected two requirements. The first one is related with the submission of the new policy. This submission should occur in the first six months of the date of the grant. And also we have another important requirement that will be the deposit of data in a trusted repository. In order to ensure that the community is able to accomplish the requirements of the new policy, we have been working in two services that complement each other. So the first one is in fact the one that is based on this presentation, the data management plan system that is based on Argos and that allows the community to prepare and submit the DMPs in accordance with the FCTs model. And the other services is in fact a data repository, a long tail service that will cover all the scientific disciplines and will enable the researchers to deposit their data in the situations that they do not have an alternative solution. So just one second, okay. So I was going to start explaining and present the analysis and the work that was carried out to select and to implement the DMP system. So back in 2020, so three years ago, as Heli mentioned in the beginning of the presentation, with the support of the University of Minho, it was prepared an analysis and a technical report on the existing tools to prepare DMP. So the main objective was in fact to evaluate what were the available tools that we could select to assess the compliance with FCTs requirements and also to sustain the decision of what was considered or will be considered as the best option for our national service. So we analyzed a total of nine tools that are represented here in the slide and we covered in detail several items including the description of the services, also the openness of the software, the extension of the community of users. We were also very focused on the existing use cases, the possibility and the flexibility to integrate funders models, the available technical support, also very important in terms of national service sustainability of the services and also evaluate obviously the potential adoption. So after this first approach, we were able to reduce the overall selection to a number of four services and there we performed even more detail analysis, more in terms of specific functionalities and also requirements. So the solution and the work that was in fact performed help us to internally discuss and decide what will be our best solution and in fact we selected Argos in a cloud service and why did we select Argos? So basically we valued a set of characteristics that we consider very useful for national service. So the fact that Argos integrates information on projects and grants via open air for us is very important. It is in fact a very flexible tool which accommodates the requirements of both institutions and funders. It has a good usability and allows working in collaboration. It enables the creation of machine actionable and readable DMPs. It is generic so for us it was very important because we could easily integrate different scientific domains. It is part of the European open science cloud services, promotes the fair principles and also we found very interesting that it covers the complete cycle including publication and sharing namely through the nodal. So we in parallel also perform an analysis and selection of the DMP templates that FCT would use and that should be included in Argos. So we opted for a widely known template which is the science Europe score requirements template. We also exchanged some thoughts with NWO and we introduced some changes but basically the main information of our template is from the science Europe's template and is including in fact in their practical guide to the international alignment of RDM which includes guidance for both researchers and reviewers information that we also considered when integrated the model in Argos. So basically the template focuses on six topics. I think it is very important that we I think that's most of the participants in the call probably already know this template but very briefly I just remind you that this six topics includes the data that is generated and or use the documentation and metadata that accompany the data. Also some questions regarding storage and backup aspects. How the ownership will be managed. Which data will be shared and preserved in the long term. And finally also the resource planning and management or responsibilities that are related with data management. So we worked very, very closely with the Argos team that includes Ellie, George and Dimitris. And the idea was in fact to try to customize some functionalities to personalize our national service. So, conjointly again with the Argos team and University of Migno we included a Portuguese version. Namely in what concerns the systems front-end. So basically the index, the messages and some of the contents were translated to Portuguese. We also translated the user guide manual. So we have all the detailed information in Portuguese also to support some of our research community. The FCT template was analyzing details with the Argos team. So we looked at each set of questions. We inserted the guidance to the researchers. We decided which answer should be and shouldn't be mandatory. We evaluated for instance the best answer formats as well as respected the dependencies between questions and very important something that is also a key factor in Argos. We selected as much as possible APIs to assist in preparation of the DMP and also already in mind to sustain the evaluation of the information. So the template was then integrated into the system and we also were able to use the English version. So we know that our community obviously include Portuguese researchers but also from another country. So for us it was really important to have these two versions of the template. So in terms of APIs I selected here some examples. So we consider for instance of researchers. So we are very easily able to select the researcher with their identifier also the organizations. In terms of the funding organization we also are able to select FCT in this case and when selecting FCT we are able to access the respective sets which is also a very easy work to do with our researchers. And I had here also an example that is related to a question in this case with metadata standards where the person that is preparing the DMP can select very easily from the dropdown list to the standard or even if it's not applicable it's possible to introduce it manually. Another important factor that we consider was also to integrate with the Research Data Alliance DMP common standards in order also to ensure the quality of the data. So once the new policy was not yet launched we still at the moment don't have a significant number of DMP submitted but I would like to share with you a very recent case regarding the data repository that we are implementing. So we are now entering in its pilot phase and we launched and one of the requirements to be able to make a proposal was in fact to prepare a DMP and we asked the candidates to prepare a DMP based on FCT model and also using Argos and the experience I believe it was very positive. We practically did not have any issues reported but we were able to to verify that the model works well and also the tool works very well. So in terms of next steps we are able to make a proposal to make a proposal to we are constantly organizing communication sessions not only related with the DMP but also with general best practices of research data management. We have a training plan so we have been doing some specific events on specific institutions like the DMP model and also Argos tool. We are constantly trying to follow up Argos new functionalities and something that is very important for us is also related with possible integrations and finally and regarding our internal process we are starting to implement the training and compliance system. So this is the presentation that I have for you today and I'm open to questions that you might have. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Philip. Thank you for this nice overview of what's happening in Portugal and also highlighting the areas that you found at least useful when looking at creativity with Argos. There is actually a question from Angela. When does this new research data management politics is expected to be implemented or published? It has been a challenge for us because we in fact have the policy already revised more than one year ago. We had internally some changes and we had an additional challenge because in fact we look at data and also to publications as two important pillars for open science and it was decided in fact to launch two policies one revision of the RDM policy and also one revision of the open access to publication policy. The fact is that FCT also adhered to plan S and it was considered like a priority to revise the policy to publications but we intend to launch both policies practically at the same time so we are planning to have also the initiative from open access to publications revised and approved in order for us to launch our own policy. I would like not to refer any specific data because it's really difficult but I'm positive and I think that we might be able to launch the policy still this year. That's excellent. Another question by Silvia for the open access data is there any control on general quality? Yes we are going to start gradually so we know that the policy will have a big impact near the community so we want to implement the policy in a gradual way so first we are going to support the community with these services and present the requirements and we will ensure that requirements are being met and in the second phase we are going to start evaluating data not the first step it should be but according to the number of projects that we will have and to the impact of this new policy we know that this is something that it's not quite realistic so first we are going to on work perform in the submission of the MPs and the next step will be to evaluate in fact the data. Thank you. Any other questions please feel free to raise your hand and pose the question using your microphone. I have here also a slide with my contact so if not in this call if anyone wants to clarify something please feel free to raise your questions there's no problem we also have a question from Julia in the meeting's notes I don't know if Julia wants to open the microphone and raise the question. Hello. I'm wondering if by discussing with other funders and discussing like the alignment in Europe for instance with Science Europe do you find any challenges or any other things that in Portugal you found more important or less important. Yes what I can tell you by the experience that we have until now I think the management is a very important pillar but in terms of maturity near the community I think that we still have a lot of work to do. We are aware that we will need in fact to raise awareness near the community I think this is one of the most important steps and it's included in our for instance communication sessions and also trying to provide some training and we want to clarify that the fact that preparing a DMP it's not an art task or that is something that it's only requested by the funder and something to complicate the research funding it's not the case and our role is also to raise the awareness that I already mentioned and try to show that in fact there's a very high benefit for the research teams in order to to practice this this task. We had the opportunity near other countries namely we participated in the AOSC synergy it's a project related to the European Open Science Cloud and we exchanged some information and we were in fact able to evaluate the maturity that I already mentioned before and we know that we are not the only country that needs to perform this type of supervision and trying to give some support near the community but we know that is a challenge and we need to evolve some change in the mindset and highlight the benefits of these best practices. Thank you Philippa. There is another question by Yanny. Thank you for the interesting presentation. I understand that you implemented this and are you able to provide additional guidance text links example tailored information about storage to storage infrastructure different institutions is the template you developed now available to everyone? Yes, yes it is in fact so this was one of the steps that we performed when working with the Argos team so right now if you access to Argos you can select and you will be able to see these templates in Portuguese or in English version and you will be able to see the set of questions according to the six topics that we discussed previously and it's really easy also to see the type of answers that are requested if they are mandatory, if they have no disinformation is available in FCT's templates. Nevertheless if you need more detail information just let me know you have my contact and we can obviously provide more detail if necessary. Just to if I can understand the question so this collaboration with the FCCN from FCT was for them to use the Argos online the service that Opener offers to create a template there was not in there was no let's say instance of the software that Argos is based on to do the storage to storage infrastructure that you say to different institutions but I see that we have in the audience one I think I saw one somewhere who has deployed Argos and can possibly also cover this part of the question can you hear us but then maybe it's we can fill up on that. Thank you very much for the answer any other questions I know that some of you might have in your plans to use to are there any questions that you would like to pose to Filipe as one of the let's say interested party that wanted to try to understand how they can implement RDN policy. We have a question from Mosca in our meeting notes if Mosca wants to open a microphone please feel free everyone to open the microphone to pose the question Thanks a lot I enjoyed your presentation very much very informative we are getting ready for something similar I was wondering so if researchers are using the template in Slovenia is there anything connected with research data did they find the template easy or did they have any remarks I know that researchers want to have everything super easy Google easy you just type something Thanks a lot I would like to add a good addition to the template so the template is based on science Europe's topics but we were able also with the support from Mali to detail more in depth the topics so we have it's not a considerable but at the beginning I was afraid that could be a big project for our researchers but in fact we were able to also settle a lot of questions we drop down menus that is quite easy for the person that is preparing the DMP and according to the experience we are getting there are no complaints about filling in the template we try to simplify the maximum but also we kept in mind that we need a lot of information so we had to find a balance between these two options but the experience it's positive we also had the opportunity to mention on the presentation we had very recently the submission of several DMPs related to the pilot phase of the other service that we have and we were very surprised because the DMPs are quite complete even some of the questions that are not mandatory researchers try to fill in and we had also some feedback that some of the questions and we know that's one of the main objectives some of the questions raised some some planning some work that needed to be discussed internally within the research team because there were some I don't know for instance related with the needed resources researchers do not tend to estimate at the beginning of the project so the template gave some guidance talking about guidance we need each question in fact some texts some links to information in order also to simplify the preparation of DMP we are also involving the research supporting staff so not only specifically the researchers but all the staff that is within the team in order to clarify as much as possible the template so these are some advices that we can contribute but please feel free to discuss further I will be quite happy to give you more detail and share more of our experience Moshka thanks a lot I really appreciate it it's very inspirational and also congratulations to FCT and Ellie thanks a lot it was wonderful really a big support and I think it's a great experience maybe the density here no we don't have additional questions anyone knows that it's in the same situation building policies and finding tools would like to ask something to now that we have her here hi good afternoon can I thank you very much for your presentation it was very informative I'm part of the team for the science technology management of our research center and I was wondering if you can show us the template where can we find it I have one from the FCT but I don't know if it is the one so I think that IFR goes already open thank you so basically just let me take you I'm going to sign in I'm already signing we cannot see the screen the presentation so I'm going to share again can you already see it very briefly I can do just your text text English contact next I'm going to select FCT and a random grant I'm not going to fill in right now the mandatory only the mandatory questions so here when you go to data set info you are able to select the template so if you select FCT you will have here the two templates that I referred so you have the model in Portuguese that I believe it's not something that you would like to use but you have here the FCT template in English so if you select it I will save my data set manually again I'm going to put test we confirm again here the template so we are already in this yellow area so it's concerning data set so it's where you can check our template so right now as you can see here in the index you'll see the six topics so data information documentation storage personal data sharing and finally the responsibilities and resources so when you choose next you will access the template so right now in the index you'll see each of the questions for each topic so the questions that start from the topic one so you can see all the questions if you go down you can see the entire template and you can see what we mentioned in terms of the analysis that we perform in order to select the type of answers that we would have you can see here some of the questions that we consider for instance with the RDA common standards you can see for instance I'm going to show you in terms of metadata for instance if you select yes you can select from the API the list for instance the standards of metadata and you have near each question you can see the the guidance that we refer so the person that is in the information has also some guidance and some additional information in order to respond to the questions I don't know if I help you with this demonstration yes yes thank you very much so you can export the template so you can I'm going just to save as it is I'm going to my datasets and it's in draft so if I open it then you have here the option of export and you have several formats for example PDF and you can check this is obviously going to be very incomplete but you'll have the the version downloaded okay thank you very much that's okay thank you thank you there is another question I was saying I just would like to add the importance of the involvement of the research support staff, librarians, administrators, etc, IT team, ethics committee, legal staff, etc in the process some questions of the DMP are very technical and this support is very important I think that's more of a statement than a question Salima is actually working with us and is also participating in the pilot phase for the repository so Salima was involved in the preparation of the DMP of her institution and project so she is very well aware of all these questions I see well thank you for also your contribution Salima Yeni has another question does the template support specification of different phases in the project defining question as a relevant in the planning phase the active phase that there is this technically possible in Argos I think this is for me and just for you to know we are going to launch a new we are doing some big changes at the moment in the front at the end for researchers so the workflows that you saw today for example that Philippe just demonstrated a few minutes before are going to be enhanced and inside well with new functionalities and with new types of information new fields one of them will be this one to specify the different phase of the project so it's not at the moment it's one of the big release that we're launching this after summer hopefully September in that case I just would like to add that we also had that challenge and the way that we try to manage the situation was in fact to select some specific questions with no mandatory we know that's at the beginning of the project probably some questions we're going to be difficult to to answer so we leave them as no mandatory but we are going to request and it's also we know that DMP it's not a statical document you need to update it from time to time and whenever you have an important change so it is expected that the research and their team will be able to update some of this information but it's good to have this information also from Mellie because it's in fact very important yeah yes we agree we've received this we are already working thank you thank you for this question again if you have any questions, links anything for discussion related to this template well if not then thank you very much for joining us today thank you for the invitation and I hope it was useful and again if any of the participants wants to clarify something or share some experience feel free please thank you very much everyone and we'll of course we are available offline but we will tune in again next month the last last Wednesday of the month thank you


So, yeah, hello everyone, and thank you for joining me today at this Libreplanet conference the day two. I'm excited to be here and I'm excited to tell you something about reuse. So reuse provides simple steps to declare your copyright and licenses. But first of all, let me set roughly the frame of this whole talk. So here at Libreplanet, I assume we are all aware of the benefits of free software. So I do not have to convince you about those. And no matter whether we are developers or not, we all care about all four freedoms of free software. And one of these four freedoms is the freedom to share software.  And thanks to free software, we can set different conditions. So we do this by choosing a free software license. They have different types, different settings. But yes, we clarify these conditions for use and reuse.  But also, of course, about you as a copyright holder, for instance. So in an ideal world, finding this license and copyright information should be that simple. But unfortunately, that's not the case. Let's be honest. It's often very hard and this uncertainty around this whole finding, licensing, and copyright information about a project or software often leads to confusion and to ignorance after all. Of course, we do not want to have this. So reuse could be understood as a solution to communicate this information a little bit better. But before we dive directly into these issues, let me quickly introduce myself. My name is Max Mehl. I work for the Free Software Foundation Europe as a program manager. Yes, and I'm really happy that we can be here today and have these 45 minutes. So, yes. So what are these typical issues with licensing? Especially free software licensing. So it's often the case that people lack information about the license and copyright of their own code or of third party code. What do I mean by that? A third party code is a little bit easier. Say you want to reuse someone else's code, which is completely fine if the conditions are met. You should be aware of their licensing choice, whether it's compatible, whether it's actually free software. And often, this is quite hard to find out. But it could also be your own code, right? We all remember if you was someone coded a script or something else five years ago, never touched it since then. You're not really sure like what was, is this all my own code or is it perhaps someone else's and which license did I pick? Did I ever give it to someone else? And if so, under which condition? So yeah, we have this missing information. Then if you reuse code, sorry, share code with others, those re-users may overlook your chosen licenses, either for all files because they do not have any clue about your licensing choice or for individual files. Oh, it could be that you have, for instance, images or blog files or configuration files or something else that is under a different license than your main chosen license if there's any. Which brings us to the next issue, how to deal with multiple licenses. I mean, you may be aware of some guidelines, how to set one license for a repository, but what if you have two, three, four or even more? That's quite realistic. Then we have license ambiguity. I mean, we are all aware of the GPR license, but hey, there's not only one license, GPR license. There are so many different variants, versions, expression, exceptions and so on. So there's a lot of ambiguity in this area. And now think of, if you have a bigger project, like a bigger community, you also want to have your contributors being aware of how you do licensing, like what's the license, how do you declare it to re-users and users? So you need to give them some sort of training and need to check that. And like, there are so many issues, like these have been around for ages. So in the meantime, there have been developed so many different best practices that are sometimes even conflicting. So this was the set of issues that we've seen when we in 2017 as the FSFE thought about, how can we do something about this? How can we make licensing and copyright easier for everyone? And by everyone, I mean not only humans, but also machines. There are so many cool tools that help you with licensing and that are used at larger re-users or somewhere else. So we also want to make it easier for machines, but of course also for humans. So these are a lot of challenges in there, right? And what we came up with is reuse basically and the principles of reuse. So this is a short summary of what we thought back then would be great to have. So a great goal or one of the big goals is that we want to make it easy to find copyright and licensing information for every single file in the repository. And by every single file, I really mean that. No matter if it rather it's a 50,000 lines of code source code file, or whether it's an image or whether it's a configuration file, it should be easy to find out the licensing and copyright for this file. But we also want to avoid silos. So silos, we often see that in the corporate area where you have some databases or some cloud services where there's information stored about different software projects. But this is not really good because this might also be conflicting and you have to find it somewhere. So in the ideal world, this information about copyright and licensing would be stored directly inside of the repository. And not in a version control system which might be migrated or break broken or something else, but really as plain text, ideally. We want to have this information readable by humans and machines. I told you that. And we want to be compatible with other initiatives with other best practices as far as possible. So in the end, we do not want to reinvent the wheel. But the most important point for me was back then to make licensing easy and fun for developers. Easy and fun again, if it was ever fun, let's be honest, but more easy, more fun for developers, no matter the project size. So whether it's your 10 files hobbyist project or whether it's a 100,000 files project like the Linux kernel or something else, we use should be applicable for all of these projects. And so basically, since it should be simple, we boil it down to three steps. And these may sound a little bit like naive to you, but you will see that these three steps actually suffers to reach all these sort of suit all these principles. So the first point is on the first step is to choose and provide licenses. That may sound easy, but it's a really important choice. You will know that you should choose a license that matches your expectations, your conditions. And there are a lot of free software licenses and you should make a really knowledgeable choice. And as soon as you chose the license or even the licenses, if you want to apply multiple licenses, you have to provide them. And we will see later how to do this. The second step is probably the most complicated and the work intensive, which is to add copyright and licensing information to each file in the repository. And the third step again is quite simple. You are asked to confirm we use compliance. Now we'll look a little bit into these three steps. So the first step again is to choose and provide licenses. So pick a license or multiple licenses. So as I said, it could well be that you have for your source code, you have a GPL version of three license, but for the images that you created, you may have some Creative Commons license. That's completely fine. And you've got to save these license texts inside of the licenses directory. So this licenses directory is a novelty that we use introduced actually, because as I said before, what to do if you have multiple licenses? There are different techniques how to do that, like people traditionally have, if they only had one license, they had a license text file at the root of their repository or copying file. But yeah, this got quite complex if you had multiple licenses. So our solution is to provide a licenses directory. Every license text file is stored in. And these, to make it even easier, are named after their SPDX license identifier. So products cursors, what is SPDX? SPDX is nowadays a project by the Linux Foundation, but I started with something really simple. They wanted to provide a unique identifier for every free software license, because as I said, there are many different variants, for instance, of the GPL license, GPL two, GPL three, and then the different things do you only apply it to like, do you only say, well, this is GPL two and not any later version, or do you say GPL two and any later version? Do you also have some exceptions? Well, this is so complex and this created so much confusion because well, people just wrote it somewhat, some way into their README files or at the commentators in the source code files. And so SPDX provides these unique identifiers for every license that is out there. So in this example, we say, well, we choose here the GPL 3.0 or any later version. And so you store the license text inside of the licenses directory as you see below. Then the second step is the most interesting one. You're asked to add information about copyright and licensing as a comment in the file header. So most source code format support comments. And for the license, we say that you should use the SPDX license identifier tag. So this is a string, how tools, but also humans can find out which SPDX license identifier actually applies. So in the example below, we see that here we say this example file has the GPL 3.0 or later license. For copyright, there are many variants. We suggest to use the SPDX file copyright text. That's a tag also as you see by the SPDX project. We use this because it's quite simple to find for tools, but also for machines. But of course, you can also stick to more traditional copyright lines like we see also in the last line. So with a copyright symbol or some other variants. So we use doesn't mandate anything in this regard. You can use any, but yeah. So in this example, this file as a comment header defines that the file is under GPL 3.0 and has two copyright holders. But now what to do if you have files that do not support comment headers or comments at all, like a JSON file or a picture or something else. We have two alternatives. I would say the most preferred alternative as a separate dot license file. So in this example below, we have an image with the name cat.jpeg. And now you're asked to create a text file called cat.jpeg.license. So this is plain text file where you're at the same information as we've seen before. This time it's a different license and a different copyright holder, but otherwise it's fine. But now there may be cases where you have a lot of binary files, like let's say a directory full of icons for your application, 500 icon files that are binary and cannot be commented. Of course, now the first alternative would mandate you to create 500 additional files, like for every single file is separate dot license file. Of course, that may not be the best solution. Now we offer a depth five file for bulk information. That five is a format introduced by the Debian project that we used here. And so there's one right now, one file called depth five inside of a specified directory where you can define directories and multiple directors with different patterns to communicate copyright and licensing for these files. So in the example below we say, every single file in the IMG images directory should be under the copyright holder, create artist and the license CC by 4.0. It's a little bit of different syntax than the rest of reuse. We are currently planning to make that a little bit more reuse style and more flexible, but I will perhaps come to that later. So with this, we can make sure or we have all options to define copyright and license for every single file in a repository. And as I said, also a configuration files and something else because we want to have this unambiguous and easy to find. And the last step is really simple. You're invited to install for instance, the reuse helper tool to check for missing information. So it's a quite lightweight Python script of course, free software can check out, and also contribute. And the simplest command is to run the reuse lint and it will call through the whole repository, tries to find copyright and licensing information according to the reuse best practices. And in this example, it tells us, well, everything is fine, you're compliant with a specification, really good. So to wrap this all up, what are the reuse specialties? What is new or what is different? So as I said, the first novelty is that restore license text files in the licenses directory. We thought about this because people complained, they wanted to use or continue with a more traditional license or copying file, only one file or writing this in the README file. Well, after a few experiments and also other specifications that did differently, we said, well, the easiest really is to have this separate directory. It's unambiguous, it's easy to find for machines and for humans. And well, it just makes sense to store this in the separate directory. A second thing is that I said again, we want to have information about copyright and licensing for every single file. And ideally as a commentator, because that would be as close to the actual file as possible, but also with alternatives. So that may sound a little bit, I would say really strong or a little bit pedantic, but it makes sense because otherwise authors just define for themselves, well, for this file, I don't need a copyright or a license, but perhaps there should be a license for this and people want to find out what licenses apply to repository. So that's why we are really strict here. And also these alternatives for uncommentable files, this is also a novelty and I would say they make sense. And yes, again, we have this unambiguous copyright and licensing information. That's, I would say, is the biggest plus of reuse. Over the course of the years, as I said to you, we started in 2017 with this project. We created different components, I would say. So nowadays I would say we have four components, roughly. So the first and foremost component is the best practices. So we wrote reuse as a specification, quite formal specification. This is important because we want that community projects but also industry actors can integrate reuse into their policies and to have a really formal specification for this. But of course, not everyone loves to read like quite dry specifications. Therefore we created a tutorial and an FAQ section. So this provides a really low entry barrier. We explain reuse from scratch with an example repository and the FAQ doesn't only cover reuse questions but also more general licensing and copyright questions that we have been asked for so many times. And then we have the reuse helper tool which I quickly introduced already. And the helper tool started with having this lint command just trying to figure out whether the reuse specification is met in the repository. But nowadays it also supports developers in making their projects reuse compliant. So automatically or see me automatically adding this licensing and copyright information to headers and these alternatives but also many other things generating a bill of materials and so on. And to show you a little bit more about this and how quick making a repository reuse compliant is by the help of the reuse helper tool I would just try to show you a demo. Let's hope for the demo gods to be friendly to me today. That sounds good. Okay, I hope you see my terminal now. So what we do here is to go through the example repository that we've set up. So you can also follow this by following the tutorial downloading or cloning the real, the example repository. But yeah, we just quickly go through it. So what's inside here? Let's see what files we have. So this is really a simple thing. We have a source code file at the very bottom, C file. We have a readme file, a make file. We have two binary files, cat and dog and a gitignal file. So in total six files, two directories. So let's start with finding out what the reuse helper tool thinks about this repository. Yeah, well, that's not so positive. Let's start from the top. It tells us that these six files do not have any copyright and licensing information. And so, yeah, it's not compliant obviously and no license got detected, but we will change that in a matter of a few commands. So we were gonna use the reuse add header command from the tool. So we add here to the files the copyright for Jane Doe and with a GPL 3.0 or later license. And for three files for the C file, for the make file and for the readme file. Okay. And it tells us, yeah, successfully changed the header of the files. So let's find out what happened in this repository by these three commands. So we see here the diff for the three files and we see that for every single or for all three files, we have this information about Jane Doe as copyright holder and the GPL 3.0 or later license in the respective comment type of the file type. Yeah, so that seemed to have worked. Now we add the information about copyright and licensing, in this case for great artist and with a CC by 4.0 license to all files in the image directory. So note here we use the asterisk that also seemed to have worked. So we see here that it got created a cat.jpeg.license file and the same for doc. So let's look what we have here. Yeah, we have two new files and let's see the license and copyright information for the cat image. Yes, so as you can see it's plain text file. You have the information as you already seen it a number of times before about copyright and licensing. So now we are going to add this information that the copyright holder of the git ignore file is again Jane Doe, but now with a CC zero license because we say, well, we do not really care about copyright of this file or for some different reasons we say this file should have a different license and it changed the header. Now what's the situation that reuse sees in this repository? Do you think it's already reuse compliant? Let's start from the top again. We see here missing licenses. So we have successfully found three different licenses and different files, but yeah, the license text files are missing. So we didn't download them yet. Therefore, yeah, but now we could of course go to the canoe.org or fsf.org website to the creative comments website and then again, yeah, try to find the license text files, but we could also just run the reuse command. We use download the dash dash all. So we could also download individual licenses, but here we say, well, download every single license that you found in the repository. And since I have internet here, it downloaded the information and we are going to run reuse lint again So what do you think? Yes, now we are completely reuse compliant. So it tells us which licenses we used and that all six files have copyright and licensing information. And as a small bonus for those people who need it, we have the reuse SPDX command. So this gives us a bill of material. Not really necessary for most, I would say hobbyistic rather pros, but for lawyers and license compliance officers, this is quite an interesting information. Okay, so switching back. So as you can see that the tool really helps to make this whole process a little bit easier. It's, I mean, in this example, we've seen just six files, but if you have a number of C files in a whole directory, just run the command, the tool on all files there where they ask the risk and you will be fine. But of course, check first the information that you actually have. If you know that you're only the only copyright holder and licensor, that's easier. But if you have a whole project, do not just run the reuse command or the reuse tool over every single file. Just saying, well, this should be GPL 3.0 or later, but be sure about this so you don't make an error. But if you know this information, then you can really guarantee that your software project is really simple to reuse for everyone. Okay, so the fourth component component that got reinvented a little bit, invented a little bit later is the API or the batch. So we didn't want that everyone had to install the reuse helper to just see the reuse stages of a project, but we wanted to have a continuous check about this. So in this case, you can just register your project with our API, it's like reuse as a service, you could say. And this generates a really quick check of your repository, basically running reuse lint on your main branch. And it creates a batch that you can integrate into your readme file, like you see on many good projects or so.  Switch over, okay, I think you should see it now. So this is ap.reuse.software. To register your project with the API, it doesn't really matter right now whether it's already reuse compliant or not. You could go to check my repository here. And all you're gonna have to do is to enter your name, your email address so we can contact you in case of urgent changes and your project URL. Right now we only support Git projects here, but we are like support for different version control systems is in the pipeline. And yeah, happy to see your contributions if you're interested or your issue requests. But we don't, we'll not go through the registration here but have a look at compliant projects. You will see them here. Yeah, so we see there are 481 repositories that are currently registered to the API. And we just see what the reuse website for instance, there was a recent change, how this looks like now. So this is the public page for a repository that you registered. And it gives you this pretty bad batch that you can just copy here as markdown. So it will always show the current status and it will always check after every single commit. You even have for developers, you have a JSON file that you can integrate into your further services. And it gives you basically the last lint output that we've already seen. So in this case, the reuse website uses a lot of different licenses and for 76 files. So that's quite simple. Of course, the API suits a different need than the tool. Like the tool can be really easily integrated into your CI CD system, for instance. So you can have it also for pull requests. While the API is more for your public phase and to show the batch and still having an alert if something is wrong from the reuse perspective. So now these were the four main components of reuse. But of course we didn't stop here. Reuse has been started in 2017 and we are continuously working on it and we have quite big plans. On the tooling side, we want to have more improvements and more automation so that it's even easier to adopt reuse to your own projects. And also for the API, we have a number of ideas and we are really open to collaboration. So if you're interested, please join the community. On the specification end, so the quite formal side of reuse, we in the future want to support more flexibility. So the step file format now is a little bit un-flexible. It's a little bit un-flexible. There's only one single file. It's hard to parse for tools. So we're thinking about something like a YAML file or JSON file that can be more easily integrated into the project, which is easier for humans to read but also for machines. And we also want to support a snippet declaration. So it's quite common that, for instance, in Stack Overflow, developers copy a snippet, some contribution by someone else and just integrate it into their source code, which is file, of course, it's three software. But of course, you are asked to also then declare the licensing and copyright of the snippet. And this is right now not possible but we are working together with the SPDX project on how to make that possible and easy to integrate. Speaking of integration, we want to further integrate reuse in platforms and also with other initiatives. So we want to collaborate here with different source forges so that they're supporting, for instance, the licenses directory, and but also integrate this with other initiatives so that we are not going on split ways but that we're working together on solving all these typical issues that we have with licensing and especially free software licensing. And of course, what I'm doing right now here, is spreading the word. So we want to support communities and also companies with adopting the best practices because that's important. If the more projects and more people, the more actors stand behind reuse and make their projects reuse compliant, the easier it is to use and reuse free software and the more ambiguity we erase who already uses reuse. So as you've seen, we have almost 500 registered API projects. And then another cool thing is that the majority of the projects of the next generation internet project is already reuse compliant or is in the process of becoming so. So especially for the US listeners, the next generation internet project is an EU project. So funded by the European Commission. And it's a great thing because those projects are all free software meant to make the internet of the future a little bit more safer, previously friendly and so on. And all of these projects funded by public money will also be reuse compliant. So that's a great thing. On the, I would say community project side, we are quite happy for instance that we have the KDE project there. So they started with the making their frameworks which basically the fundamentals of the whole KDE project are reuse compliant. And they also integrated reuse in their policies so that all contributors, all developers in KDE are asked to follow the reuse best practices which we come to the beginning of the after talk also eases the onboarding of developers. So they just have to follow these quite simple best practices. On the company side, we have, we know we are aware that a reuse is part of the policies of, for instance, Siemens, SAP, LiveRay also of different working groups like Linux Foundation Energy. So we see that the adoption increases quite quickly. Also the Linux kernel is partly reuse compliant already. They have a long road and a long history of course and a lot of ambiguity. And yeah, so we are quite happy that I would say roughly 60 to 70% of the Linux kernel are already reuse compliant. Now the question is, are you already an adopter of reuse? If so, it's great. If not, then follow these five steps. So the easiest part of course is to sign up the mailing list. So we have a mailing list for reuse where it's quite low volume but where we spread information about the latest releases but also where we discuss about the next steps. So reuse is a quite collaborative and open project. So we ask for feedback there. You're happy to or invited to share your feedback and also your proposals for the next iterations. Then the next step would be to make one of your projects reuse compliant actually. As you've seen with the tool and the API, that's quite simple. So just write out, right?  For many projects, there are like these contribution guidelines or you can just make this project from the start on reuse compliant to really try to, I would say, invest the time the first time basically to really clear the information to avoid ambiguity inside of the community project. Try to find out the license and copyright holders for all files. And then from this point on, go reuse compliant and keep this level because the later you start the harder it will be to improve your licensing and copyright information. Then if you're really convinced of reuse, which I hope you do, then you can contribute code to reuse. So all things we have are free software, open, are accessible. You can create issues there, pull requests. We're really happy to work with you here. And most importantly, help others to adopt reuse. May it be in your company, in your job, in your community, just help them or spread the word about this. That would be really great. And with this, I would like to end this talk. I thank you for your attendance and I'm very much looking forward to your questions. Thank you. Hi everyone, this is Stefan. Let me introduce myself quickly. I hope everyone can hear me. I'm the room monitor for this talk. And I'm happy to restate the questions that you already put into the IRC channel for the Jupiter room. And please go on, please go on writing questions. And we have about 10 minutes left. So I suggest to go quickly. We have many good questions and I try to pull those up and just start with the first one. So let's just dive into the question. There was one question. Is there any specific handling of Apache 2.0 notice files? So can you say something about that, Max? I'm not sure what you mean with notice files. I know, not really. No, in this case, not really. I mean, we have many licenses, also like MIT or BSD licenses that are customized in a sense. And in the FAQ, we have a few suggestions how to deal with those. You could, in the reuse term, make this a custom license and treat it as a custom license where you add this information in the license text file, for instance. I'm not quite sure whether I know how this works with Apache 2.0, but yeah, this is the whole deal. That could be a way how to integrate this, especially for MIT and BSD. You're just saying there are so many licenses out there. That is true. One question in this area was the reuse project now supporting all licenses out there or is it aware of all or how do you handle this variation? That's a good question. So we integrate the, I would say, license database of SPDX, which is quite huge. Go on spdx.org slash licenses or so. We support these from scratch. So we can use these license identifiers, but as I said, you can add custom licenses and yeah, you can just give them a name or name them differently. Like for instance, you have multiple MIT licenses that have different templates because perhaps you note that in the MIT license, you could add your name and the year and your email address and have basically a custom license that differs from other MIT licenses. So it's quite simple there to make these custom licenses in the real sense and in practice, it supports any license that you have. But of course, I should add this. We use doesn't know, is not aware of license compatibility. So you know that there are different licenses that are incompatible. So we use is not aware of this, especially since we have something like custom licenses. So that's a different step. There are projects out there that try to solve this. We use cares about the communication of licensing and copyright and from then on other tools and other practices can pick this up. Okay, good. So that is something I have to keep in mind for myself. You talked a lot about SPDX and we have some question about SPDX. So, you know, in general, um, of like, here was one question. Most efforts like this, so like like reuse are controlled by companies and that trade association. So it's to a question reuse relies on SPDX identifiers which are controlled by Linux Foundation. Does it mean is it somehow bound to the Linux Foundation or controlled or are you independent of that? And you know, there's always, you probably know that best. There's always a high potential of politicalization when you come to those big foundations like Linux Foundation or something else. No, so reuse is a completely independent project in the sense that it's the FSFE, Free Software Foundation Europe, is the coordinator of the project. So we kickstarted this, but everything that we have is under a free software license and we are in a charity organization like our sister organization in the US. Of course we rely on different tools and best practices like the SPDX project but their specification also is free software in the sense. Of course I can see that the, I would say the potential for misuse, but right now we use the specification from them which is quite great. And we find this important to not, we invent the wheel here. We had this, we saw this initiative there that already solved a lot of issues like having unique identifiers for licenses for instance, having these tags that are understood by many different other tools and initiatives. So we do not want to split the efforts here. Of course we, then depending on how you see it, there might be different sides, but in the end it suits everyone. If you create free software, it can also be used by companies behind the Linux Foundation for instance. And that's fine, that's free software. And reuse and also the part that reuse uses from SPDX is completely free software. It's an open specification. So I don't see any potential for misuse here. Yeah, I understand. There's a related question that goes like this. The Linux Foundation has voted identifiers for some licenses that are used in wild. Are you planning to have a supplement license list to fill this gap? I'm not so aware of what you said about this, but not really, no, we are not in trying to integrate like a separate license list for this. As I said, you can add custom licenses. That would be a way to do this other than that. I mean, this is perhaps a more general or brings me to a more general topic. We have been asked so many times about whether we want to integrate more functionality in reuse like security checks or more meta information. And in the end, we always said no to those things because copyright and licensing itself is already quite complicated. And now we do not want to load up this whole thing, but instead make like concentrate on these core issues, copyright and licensing and concentrate on making those easier also for, I would say more hobbyist developers who do not have legal staff that they can ask all the time. And so this is still the main goal. And therefore we want to keep it simple and keep it quite slim. Okay, let me restate a more specific question. Let's say that I work in a project with code licensed on the GPL version three and with some text files and images which have some other custom licenses. How can I use reuse in the reuse project for this case? Did you say other common or uncommon licenses? I didn't understand. No other like the GPL and which some text file and image file which in some other custom license. Custom license. Well, it's quite simple. Basically like we did it in the demo with a tool for the GPL license is not an issue. You can just say, well, you run the add header command on the files that are licensed on the GPL. You should decide whether GPL three only or three.o or later, that should be defined. And you can download the license text for this GPL license then. For the custom license, I again refer to the FAQ on reuse.software slash FAQ. There's a section how to add these custom licenses. Of course, it's some manual work here. We currently don't have to like not the complete tooling for this, but in the end, yeah, for these custom licenses, you can create a custom license text file basically in which you like download the text file for the custom license, put it into the licenses directory and then apply this custom license to all the files that apply to it. So basically for the reuse, in the reuse practice, there is no difference between the custom license and something that is on the SPDX license list. There's also no difference between a proprietary, permissive license or copy left license. Reuse treats all licenses the same in this regard to make it easy because we do not want to have a different hierarchy of licenses there because that would be even harder for people. But again, we want to make it fun and easy. Okay, Max, can you have a quick word on another specific question? Would the reuse use project be willing to maintain a list of important or well-known license that need identifiers that SPDX refuses to list instead of using custom fields? I'm not so aware of which licenses could be meant by that. I would say just write me an email and I'm happy to look at what the issue there is and also happy perhaps to collaborate with the SPDX project here that they add this license. I think that would be, again, no split brain here but instead trying to work together, that would be my primary goal. But please write me an email for such a specific case. So far, no experience on that. Okay, one quick question about tooling. Can the tooling help generation and maintenance of DAP5, Debian or copyright files, say converting from to reuse formats? Unfortunately not. That's a little bit also the case why we wanted to deprecate this DAP5 format since it's a little bit different from how reuse treats things and wanted to more go into an own format. Basically, in this case reinvent the wheel actually for the first time, but no, unfortunately not. But if we migrate away from this DAP5 format to the YAML file, there could be some conversion tool anyway or there should be one anyway. So it could well be that we also have like the other way around conversion tool. Could work, okay. But again, write an issue there. That's a good idea, please write an issue on the repository and I'm happy to think about how we can integrate this. Okay, thank you very much, Max. We are close to the end of the session and I invite you to join the IRC. There's a good discussion going on and maybe when you jump in maybe there will be some interesting sorts. If we have more time, I can maybe talk about another general topic. What is your experience about source forges and their reaction to the reuse philosophy? How are you, what information was the new directory and so on are there like trying to understand it? You know, some source forges, say look into the files and try to find the license so that it is displayed somehow in the repository. Like what I know from GitHub for instance is they just look for the license or copying file and try with some heuristics, try to match this to an actual license. I'm not so much a fan of this. Of course, as you might imagine, unfortunately the licenses directory by reuse is not yet supported. I just know that they are generally open to this idea but they did not have the time or not the priority yet to integrate this and they're also not certain how to display potentially multiple licenses there. For GitLab, I unfortunately don't have a really direct contact. We tried numerous times to find someone to have it integrated into their display of which licenses use in the repository. In the end, I think the source forges should not try to crawl the repository themselves. I think it's completely sufficient if they list which license text files are inside of the repository. Otherwise we have again a heuristic there and I made really bad experiences with heuristics because well, no one can tell you whether it's a GPL 3.0 only license or any later version. Other smaller variants and exceptions to licenses. So here I think this information should be provided by the repository owners, by the maintainers because they know best and not by the hosters of the source code and not by the re-users because in the end, otherwise we just do it all over again and we should tackle the sole problem of this ambiguity and this uncertainty. We should tackle that at the root and which is the actual project and its maintainers. Okay, good understood. I didn't get any signal about the end of the session so we can just go on until someone just let us know that we are off record and there's kind of a discussion going on about the IDs, the SPDX IDs and there is probably a big specification behind SPDX so how can I find out about what, like the text, the text when I have an editable file and I put the text in the header and how do I find out what text I supported and how do I find out what identifiers SPDX present and how can I learn about that? For the identifiers, as I said, there's spdx.org slash licenses no promise, SPDX is not my project but yeah, there's a list of all licenses and all IDs for licenses that are supported by SPDX. Regarding the other text, yeah, the specification by SPDX is quite big. They initially started with an XML format t-thing. We just basically chose these two texts that were interesting to us, namely the SPDX license identifier and the SPDX file copyright text and yeah, basically there are many other different texts that are available, I think, some even for upstream contact or so. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you, please ask the SPDX project there, quite friendly guys still. That's good and understood. I also got the signal that we should end so I would ask you to close this session and you are invited to join the discussion on the IRC and I thank you again for the talk and hope to see you later. Yeah, thank you very much, I just joined the discussion. Thank you.


The portfolio of questions and the portfolio this afternoon is net zero and just transition. We will suspend briefly. I did think that my voice was not as loud as normal. So, thank you, Mr Fraser, for the gesticulation. The portfolio this afternoon is net zero and just transition. As ever, I would appreciate the brief questions and succinct answers to match to get in as many members as possible. Rhoads Macall. What action is taking to improve transport options in rural areas? Our strategic transport projects' review includes recommendations focused on rural areas, including connecting towns and villages, improving active travel and trunk roads and investing in demand responsive transport to improve connectivity. However, we are already taking action. The go-high project has improved accessibility to integrated transport services in the highlands, the community bus fund and the toolkit of powers within the transport act will enable local authorities to pursue options that best meet their needs, including the distinct challenges that rural areas face. This year's record active travel funding will support new projects for rural communities. I thank the minister for that response. Bus services are a vital lifeline for local communities, especially in rural areas. A constituency in my region with poor mobility used to take the 27a bus from Dunfermlyn to Cacoddy to collect her prescription. This service has been cancelled, which makes it even more difficult for her to get her much needed medicine. Due to the Scottish Government's decision not to extend the network support grant plus, fares have risen by an average of 15 per cent across east Scotland, and local services in Fife are projected to be cut by a further 10 per cent. Will the Scottish Government publish its fair fares review before the summer recess of 2023, or will my rural constituents continue to suffer additional root cuts and increased costs? The network support grant plus was a package that we put in place to help bus operators during the Covid pandemic when there was a real impact on services. It was not designed to be a permanent fixture but was to deal with that emergency period. We will continue to work in partnership with bus operators and local authorities to create the best possible service that we can. The network support grant will continue to provide support to the bus industry in 2023-24. It has paid per kilometre travel and is targeting support to the longer and less commercially viable routes in rural and island communities. In terms of our fair fares review, we will publish that in the near future. Ms McCall and others will understand that it is a hefty piece of work that we want to get right for all the people of Scotland. The minister will be aware that the former Deputy First Minister agreed with Orkney Islands Council to establish a task force to look at the replacement of the fairies operating on Orkney's lifeline internal routes. Since the election of the new First Minister proposed meetings of the task force have not taken place, I am not aware of alternative dates having been set. I would be very grateful if the minister could advise when the task force is next due to meet and what assurances he can give that this will remain on the radar of the cabinet, given that the Deputy First Minister is no longer in post. The task force will be chaired by the new Deputy First Minister, Shona Robison, and I will update Mr MacArthur when we have dates in place for the first meeting. What I would say to Mr MacArthur and to members is that we recognise the importance of the work of that task force. I intend to go to Orkney in the very near future. As Mr MacArthur is aware, I have had a couple of meetings with the council in recent times and I hope that the co-operation and collaboration that we have in place will continue. Scotland's rural communities have great ideas on how to improve our national rail network. At the moment, ScotRail services passed through Nubra, but have not stopped there since the station closed in 1955. A simple low-cost modular station could reconnect Nubra to the rail network. Can I ask what discussions the minister had about the opportunities provided by the modular stations? Will the minister agree to meet me and the Nubra rail station campaign in the months to come? I have not had any discussions about modular stations per se in the short time that I have been in post, but I understand that Transport Scotland officials are already engaged with SESTRAN on its appraisal of the Nubra area and have offered a meeting. However, it should be noted that modular stations are not suitable for all locations, but, as always, I am happy to have further discussions with Mr Ruskell and constituents on those matters. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to a recent report by Changeworks, which found that homes in rural areas have a lower energy performance certificate meeting than the rest of Scotland. Minister Patrick Harvie. I would like to express my thanks to Changeworks for their work in this area and for bringing forward this important report. The average energy performance certificate rating of rural properties is lower than those in urban areas because of the typically more expensive fuels that are used or available, how those are reflected in the current EPC metric and the historically lower energy efficiency standards. We are proposing that all housing in Scotland meet the equivalent of EPCC by 2033 and that we revise EPC metrics. We offer support to improve the energy efficiency of rural homes, including a funding uplift to our Home Energy Scotland grant and loan scheme, and targeted fuel poverty support. He knows that improving energy efficiency in rural and off-grid homes is absolutely critical for reducing energy bills and also meeting net zero targets. However, as the Changeworks report makes very clear, the SNP's heatpub approach does not suit many of the older properties in the rural economy. Is the SNP doing to encourage investment in alternative heating solutions such as biofuel LNG? We are working on policy in the area of biofuels in line with the UK Climate Change Committee's recommendations, which see some role but recognise that there will be limits to the role of bioenergy in the heating system. Meanwhile, we provide, as I said earlier in my first answer, an uplift to the grant and loan schemes for rural areas. In particular, we need to ensure that we are investing in the skills and capacity in the industry, just to give one example that we have invested in a mobile training centre for heatpump installation. It is being hosted by South Lanarkshire College but is available to any college in Scotland for training in rural areas on site. That will help to ensure that local communities have access to skilled professionals who are able to assess and install heatpumps in all types of buildings. Last April, the Scottish Government estimated that there were more than 874,000 households in fuel poverty in Scotland, but its insulation and energy efficiency scheme has now closed to applications until October. At the current rate of progress, it would take 165 years to insulate every fuel poor household in Scotland. Can the Scottish Government explain what has gone wrong? Something has gone very right in that we are replacing that scheme with a much improved successor. While that transition happens, new referrals will be referred on to the provider under the terms of the successor scheme rather than the less generous terms of the previous scheme. I know that the member and other constituency and regional members representing rural and island communities have repeatedly expressed their concerns. I think that the Scottish Government's heat and building programme is the most ambitious in any other part of these islands, certainly, and is looking to achieve the same kind of investment in a sustainable, equitable and system that is insulating people from fuel poverty comparable to what some of the best countries in Europe have achieved in previous decades. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the role that it anticipates that the low-carbon and renewables sector will play in the transition to net zero, including on any relevant discussions that took place at the recent all-energy conference in Glasgow. The low-carbon and renewables sector plays an essential role in delivering Scotland's net zero ambitions. The draft energy strategy and just transition plan sets out a vision for an energy system that delivers affordable, resilient and clean energy supplies. The First Minister, myself and three other Government ministers attended the all-energy conference and we had constructive discussions with a range of energy companies and other stakeholders. The First Minister particularly re-emphasised this Government's commitment to the Scottish cluster and the importance of an early and positive decision from the UK Government on CCUS in Scotland. I thank the Minister for Energy for that answer. In the First Minister's speech to the all-energy conference, he spoke about the flaws in the current transmission network charging system. What discussions has the Scottish Government had with the UK Government about fixing the methodology used, which, as it stands currently, is a potential barrier to supporting our renewable sector? I thank Jackie Dunbar for that assessment, and it is something that comes up practically in every single meeting that I have with every single stakeholder. The Scottish Government has repeatedly called for the change to the current system of transmission network use of system charges. My officials are in regular contact with Ofgem in this matter. I am pleased that Ofgem has now reconvened the TNUS task force, as it was delayed to allow Ofgem to focus on the issue of security of supply over winter. However, the fact of the matter remains that a new approach is needed here, rather than small modifications to methodologies, and we will continue to raise this with Ofgem and our counterparts in the UK Government to push for a further solution that recognises the renewable capabilities of Scotland. We need to do everything we can to maximise Scotland's potential to power the nation using low-emissions technology, harnessing our substantial natural resources, and we need to do it in a way that creates economic prosperity for communities and businesses. In the end, it supplies our households in Scotland with cleaner, cheaper power—the cheaper power that they so desperately need and want. I have three members seeking to ask a supplementary, and I intend to take all three. The Government's transition of North Sea workers to offshore wind rolls has delivered only 3,100 positions in Scotland. I have discovered that the Government does not even break that data down to understand where those jobs are located. It cannot even say if a single worker in the north-east is part of the transition. So, when does the Government intend to start collating and interrogating data properly, and thus provide a more realistic and rigorous assessment of its failure to deliver a just transition? I am familiar with Mr Kerr's asking this, because I think that I just issued a parliamentary answer to his written question on this. As it stands at the moment, we do not have that granular data, but there are methods in the Government to collate the data and produce it in such a way that it has been requested, but that work is on-going. Minister, given the fantastic opportunities that are highlighted at the All Energy Conference and the need to tackle both the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis, what discussions has the minister got planned with COSLA to support local authorities to deliver council and community co-operatively-led heat and power schemes, given the huge benefits that could deliver to our constituents? That came up in discussion yesterday with the onshore wind strategy leadership group. We absolutely have to engage COSLA in looking at how we can support communities to look at shared ownership in particular. We are doing a number of pieces of work in that area, actually taking advice from the council that the strategic leadership group that I just mentioned to her, actually, we are working that actively yesterday in their quarterly meeting. I do not think that we can do this without the help of COSLA and our local government partners, so I am really keen to have that conversation with our colleagues in COSLA quite soon, but what I want to do is to wait for some of the advice that is coming from the group that I mentioned so that I can make those conversations more constructive and have a real secure plan in place to see how we can maximise the opportunities that we have in communities, but we can also learn the lessons from communities that have already made that leap so that we can make that more efficient. The just transition to net zero will require significant levels of investment to deliver its ambitions, including, of course, public as well as private sector investment, and I was encouraged by my discussions with investors when I spoke at the oil energy conference the other week. What work is the Scottish Government doing to leverage in capital investment for infrastructure and business growth opportunities to deliver the net zero transition? Pretty much every stream of work that has been done in the energy area is going to be a mix of public sector support, Government support, but also leveraging in that capital from private investors as well. What we need to signal as a Government is that those private investors are going to be putting that money in the right areas. I am working closely with Scottish Enterprise in that area. Ivan McKee will know how important they are in actually signalling that private sector investment, where the Government's goals are in that area and where we can actually get confidence in certain areas. If Ivan McKee wanted to write to me specifically, I could break that down into the individual pieces of information that he may require. To ask the Scottish Government what anticipates the impact of a green jobs fund will be on the Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley constituency. The Green Jobs Fund aims to create green employment, drive economic growth and support businesses to transition to a low-carbon economy through capital investment in equipment and premises and research and development. Discussions on projects that could be supported by the fund in Ayrshire are under way, potentially creating hundreds of new jobs in the area. As future green job fund awards are made, we will continue to update on the progress of the fund and the expected green jobs that are resulting from it. I can tell her that Ayrshire has launched her net zero accelerator programme with partners and employers to focus on gaining the knowledge on how best to move to net zero and how to gain the skills and accreditation for this too. Does the minister agree that it is vital that every part of Scotland both participates and benefits from the transition to net zero, particularly through vehicles such as the Green Jobs Fund? Does she give my constituents an assurance that the Government will assist in any way that it can to build that capacity locally as we strive to make the important transition in every community in Scotland? Willie Coffey makes an excellent point. The scale of the climate and nature crisis, the pace with which we as a society need to move to make the change, commensurate with that challenge, means that progress must absolutely be built from communities, for communities and within communities. Only then can the quite transformational change that is required in the coming years and decades be delivered at the scale required and be sustainable. I want to give my commitment to Willie Coffey and to his constituents that the Government is dedicated to working with them as we take that journey. To ask the Scottish Government what discussions the net zero secretary has had with ministerial colleagues regarding how a 7 million of grants allocated through the hydrogen innovation scheme will support Scotland's low-carbon economy. I regularly engage with ministerial colleagues on maximising the economic opportunities of net zero. That includes our drive to reach 5 gigawatts of installed hydrogen production capacity by 2030. We have backed up that ambition by grants totaling over £7 million, which has been offered to 32 Scottish projects through our hydrogen innovation scheme. Those will advance innovative solutions to scaling up hydrogen production, storage and distribution. That is something that I was able to highlight to industry stakeholders at the Aberdeen Grampian Chambers of Commerce earlier this week. That funding, together with our just transition fund, together with the energy transition fund, is demonstrating our commitment to supporting Scotland's fair, prosperous and speedy transition. I thank the cabinet secretary for her answer. Each 105 is a first of a kind demonstration project that is leading the way in decarbonising home heating, providing evidence for future low-carbon policy decisions and a clear pathway towards net zero heating for Scotland. Does the cabinet secretary agree that hydrogen is a promising opportunity as we look to transition from fossil fuels and decarbonising home heating? Yes, I agree. We absolutely know that hydrogen will be a key part of our journey to net zero, and complementary to electricity will play a role in industrial decarbonisation, transport and potentially heating some homes and building. The SGN H105 neighbourhood trial, for example, will feed into this work, as will other large village and town trials in the UK. The H105 project is currently under construction, which aims to fit 100 per cent hydrogen boilers into 300 homes in Leven. The project, I understand, is scheduled to go live in 2024 and operate until March 27, and the Scottish Government has gladly provided £6.9 million worth of grant funding to the project. I know that the cabinet secretary agrees with me that we have a fantastic opportunity to be world leading in the green hydrogen economy, but we are behind the curve behind Germany, Holland, Belgium, Middle East and the USA. What will the Scottish Government do to ensure that the red tape that is being reported to me from business to access the pump prime funding that she mentioned for early stage hydrogen companies will, in turn, release further money from private investment to ensure that we fully realise our hydrogen potential? Before I ask the cabinet secretary to respond, I remind all members that they are required to be here for the start of proceedings should they wish to contribute to the proceedings. If they wish to contribute to the proceedings, they should therefore apologise before they make their contribution. We recognise the potential that Scotland has in hydrogen and we are committed to doing everything that we possibly can to maximise the realisation of that. That includes our hydrogen action plan, but we are not just planning. It is supported by £100 million of capital funding, which is designed to accelerate and maximise the production of renewable hydrogen in Scotland for use in Scotland. However, I should also say that analysis suggests a very large hydrogen export opportunity for Scotland, with some estimates thinking that there could be between 70,000 to over 300,000 jobs protected or created and a GVA impact of those export scenarios ranging from £5 billion to £25 billion per annum by 2045. The Scottish Government is doing everything that we can to realise those opportunities. We very much need the UK Government to do their part and to act with the speed whip that we are demonstrating in order to realise that fully. Question number six has been withdrawn. Question number seven, Richard Leonard. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its plans for Scottish carbon credits, including how it ensures benefits for local communities. The Scottish Government is committed to establishing a values-led, high integrity market for responsible private investment in our natural capital, and that is set out in the national strategy for economic transformation. That commitment includes the voluntary carbon market, as backed up by the Committee on Climate Change, and is supported by our interim principles for responsible investment in natural capital. Those principles set out that investment should deliver integrated land use, should provide public, private and community benefit, should demonstrate engagement and collaboration, have ethical and be values-led, be of high environmental integrity and support diverse and productive land ownership. Those are Scottish ministers' expectations of those who would invest in our natural capital. Richard Leonard. Can I thank the cabinet secretary for that reply, but isn't it the case that far from protecting community interests in achieving net zero, the SNP green government has embarked on an exercise in privatising our nature and opening up carbon credits to speculators and giant corporations to asset strip, cash in, make all the gains and so widen the wealth inequality gap even further. They include fleet core, which sells fuel cards to the road haulage industry. They oil giant shell, defence companies like Tarlis, banks like Barclays. How is that green sustainable or even in the national interest? How is that values-led? Is this what equality opportunity community looks like under this SNP green government? Quite the opposite to the narration from Richard Leonard. This is about the Scottish Government recognising that our natural capital is an exceptionally valuable asset to our people and to our environment. It's about recognising that there are many interventions that we need to take in our natural environment, which will help us rise to the climate and nature emergency and have other co-benefits, including good green jobs in rural areas. However, the public purse can never and will never fund those interventions alone, so we are dedicating ourselves to, as Ms Martin set out, leveraging necessary private investment, but doing so in a pioneering way, and in a way that is values-led, high integrity, which is additional, verifiable and which benefits the people of this country. I have to say that that sits alongside the development of an ambitious land reform bill and continued investment in the Scottish land fund, which is helping communities throughout the country by landing assets in their local areas and putting them to local use. Pension and hedge funds are engaged in the carbon market, similar to the position on the deposit return scheme, where the SNP greens decided to award a multimillion pound waste collection contract to an American hedge fund. Can the cabinet secretary confirm to Parliament that it is SNP green policy to develop new initiatives in order to benefit multinational hedge funds? That is not this Government's motivation. As I have just narrated in response to Richard Leonard, our motivation is seeking to harness the opportunities that we have in abundance in Scotland, in a way that helps us to rise to the climate and a nature emergency, but equally in a way that empowers our people to benefit from the schemes and the developments that will happen in the communities around them. I refer Maurice Golden back to those principles for responsible investment in natural capital. They are pioneering principles that are being referred to by other organisations in countries that are trying now to do likewise. They state very clearly ministers' expectations, and I refer them to them on ethical and values-led investment, on high environmental integrity, on public, private and community benefit, and I would be more than happy to furnish Maurice Golden with evidence of how they are now being utilised by those who are investing in Scotland. 8. Fulton MacGregor, who is joining us remotely. Mr MacGregor, we now have you. Could you please start your question again? Thank you. Mr MacGregor, could you please unmute? Mr MacGregor, I think we have you now. Please start. Apologies again, Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Government how the Scottish Zero Emission Bus Challenge Fund is supporting change in the bus sector in light of Scotland's net zero ambitions. Minister Kevin Stewart. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Last week I launched the second and final phase of the challenge fund while visiting Alexander Denison-Larbert. The Scottish Government is offering up to £58 million to transform the market for zero emission buses on top of the previous investment of over £113 million in zero emission buses. It is clear that the market is now a pivotal point, and with the money that I am offering the sector could make the zero emission bus market self-sustaining, enabling bus and coach operators of all types and sizes to achieve the zero emissions over the coming years. I thank the minister for that response. Bus transport is crucial to many of our communities, and services such as the recently reintroduced CityLink 902 service provide a vital link in my constituency to city centres. Initiatives such as ScotZEB and the Transformational Under-22 bus pass will be crucial to ensuring that Scotland's bus sector is at the heart of the modal shift that we need to see away from cars as we strive from net zero. Can I therefore ask the minister what level of support the Scottish Government has already provided via ScotZEB and how many buses it has provided? I should note the campaigning efforts of Mr McGregor and Neil Gray on the CityLink 902 that he spoke of. The Government awarded £62 million through the first phase of ScotZEB, helping operators to acquire 276 battery electric buses and the associated charging infrastructure. That is over and above the £52 million capital that we have put in previously, plus a resource commitment that is worth up to £20 million that we have provided through our previous fund to support 272 battery electric buses and that infrastructure. We are helping the bus sector to decarbonise. We are encouraging more people to choose bus and to take fewer journeys by cars. Alongside that, we have seen over 62 million free bus journeys made by young people across Scotland since the introduction of our young persons scheme. That is all good news for the people of Scotland. Thank you minister. That concludes portfolio questions on net zero and just transition. There will be a very short pause before we move on to the next item of business, to allow front bench teams to change positions should they wish.