---
created_at: '2016-10-25T03:35:13.000Z'
title: Welcome to the CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository (1994)
url: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/readme.txt
author: jessup
points: 44
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[Source](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/readme.txt "Permalink to ")

;;; Wed Aug 31 13:37:45 1994 by AI Repository  ;;; readme.txt -- 21974 bytes ************************************************************************** *** PLEASE READ THIS FILE BEFORE RETRIEVING FILES FROM THE REPOSITORY. *** ************************************************************************** Welcome to the CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository. This file contains important information concerning the repository and conditions on use of the repository. By retrieving files from the repository, you signify your agreement to these conditions. If you have not already read the file named 0.doc in this directory, you should read it before this one. *** [0] Table of Contents This file is divided into the following sections: [1] Introduction [2] Conditions on Use of the AI Repository [3] Retrieving Files by FTP and AFS [4] Accessing the Repository by World Wide Web (WWW) [5] Structure of the Repository [6] Bug Reports [7] Mailing List [8] Contributing Files to the Repository [9] CD-ROM [10] Miscellaneous *** [1] Introduction The Artificial Intelligence Repository was established by Mark Kantrowitz in 1993 to collect files, programs and publications of interest to Artificial Intelligence researchers, educators, and students. It is an outgrowth of the Lisp Utilities Repository established by Mark in 1990 and his work on the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) postings for the AI, Lisp, Scheme, and Prolog newsgroups. The Lisp Utilities Repository has been merged into the AI Repository. We'd like to thank Rich Morin of Prime Time Freeware and Raj Reddy of Carnegie Mellon University for their enthusiastic support of this project. The AI Repository is accessible by anonymous FTP and AFS without charge (see [3]). A subset of the contents of the repository is published by Prime Time Freeware as an inexpensive mixed-media (Book/CD-ROM) publication (see [9]). The repository contains \- AI programming language implementations, including Lisp, Prolog, Scheme, and Smalltalk \- Software in all areas of AI, including (but not limited to) AI Agent Architectures Machine Discovery Analogical Reasoning Machine Learning Artificial Life Medical Reasoning Blackboard Architectures Natural Language Generation Case Based Reasoning Natural Language Understanding Cellular Automata Neural Networks Classical AI Programs Parsing Constraint Processing Planning Corpora and Lexica Probabilistic Reasoning Defeasible Reasoning Qualitative Reasoning Distributed AI Robotics Expert Systems Search Fuzzy Logic Speech Synthesis Game Playing Speech Understanding Genetic Algorithms Temporal Reasoning Genetic Programming Theorem Proving ICOT Free Software Truth Maintenance Knowledge Representation Vision Legal Reasoning \- Announcements of current conferences, courses, talks, and workshops, including calls for papers. (Under construction.) \- Technical reports, abstracts, bibliographies, theses, books, book reviews, survey articles, and frequently asked questions (FAQ) postings. (Under construction.) \- Archives of mailing lists and newsgroups. (Under construction.) *** [2] Conditions on Use of the AI Repository In case it be determined by a court of competent jurisdiction that any provision herein contained is illegal, invalid or unenforceable, such determination shall solely affect such provision and shall not affect or impair the remaining provisions of this document. 1\. LACK OF WARRANTY. This software is made available "AS IS" and is distributed without warranties of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, without limitation, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty is made about the software or its performance. Carnegie Mellon University and the repository maintainer(s) do not accept any responsibility to anyone for the consequences of using materials from the repository or for whether such materials serve any particular purpose or work at all. In no event will Carnegie Mellon University or the repository maintainer(s) be liable to you for damages, including lost profits, lost monies, lost revenue, or other special, incidental, consequential, indirect or punitive damages arising out of or in connection with the use or inability to use the software (including but not limited to loss of data or data being rendered inaccurate or losses sustained by third parties or a failure of the program to operate as documented), even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages, or for any claim by any other party, whether in an action of contract, negligence, or other tortious action. Carnegie Mellon University and the repository maintainer(s) are under no obligation to provide any services, by way of maintenance, update, or otherwise. Inclusion of materials in the repository does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation of the materials and shall not be interpreted as such. 2\. EXPERIMENTAL NATURE OF THE MATERIALS. The materials included in the repository are to be considered experimental in nature. You assume any and all risk involved in using the software and agree to indemnify Carnegie Mellon University and the repository maintainer(s) against any and all actions arising from its use. USE OF THIS MATERIAL IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. We specifically deny any responsibility for the accuracy or quality of information contained in this distribution. We do not warrant the accuracy of the information provided. We do not warrant that the software, documentation, or the information provided will satisfy your requirements, or that the software and documentation are without defect or error, or that the operation of the software will be uninterrupted. By retrieving files from the repository and/or using the software (or authorizing any other person to do so) you signify your acceptance of these conditions. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THESE TERMS, DO NOT RETRIEVE FILES FROM THE REPOSITORY. 3\. FREELY DISTRIBUTABLE and FREE USAGE. Use and copying of the software and the preparation of derivative works based on this software are permitted, subject to the author's terms and conditions. Public domain software and software covered by the GNU General Public License automatically meet this definition. (To save space, a single copy of the various versions of the GNU GPL have been placed in the directory copying/gpl/) Copyrighted software will be included if and only if the author(s) agree to let the software be distributed and used without fee. The authors of copyrighted software may place certain other restrictions on the software, such as restrictions against the commercialization of the software. See 4 for details. 4\. OTHER CONDITIONS. Some of the software packages included in the repository contain additional restrictions on their use. Conditions specific to a particular program or system will be included in a file named LICENSE, COPYING, COPYRIGHT, README, or something similar (e.g., as a comment at the top of the source code files) in the tar file containing the program. You agree to adhere to these conditions. Any copyright notice or file must be left intact and included with any copy of the software or materials. In particular, some packages may contain restrictions against the commercialization of the software. Separate licensing is often available for companies wishing to commercialize the software or to incorporate the software into a commercial product. Contact the author(s) for details. Other packages may go one step further, and restrict the software license to non-commercial (education, research, and personal use) purposes. There is an important difference between "restrictions on commercialization" and "prohibition of commercial use". If you just want to prevent folks from selling your program or incorporating it into a commercial product, we recommend using the former. There may be other conditions, such restrictions against non-military use, restrictions against use in nuclear power plants or other safety-critical applications, and so on. Read the copyright notices in the packages for details. If we feel that an author's conditions unduly restrict the ability to distribute, use, and modify the software, we will not include it in the repository. The file copying/non_gpl/template.txt contains a template for an acceptable copyright notice if you're cooking up one from scratch (the GNU GPL is also acceptable). 5\. COURTESIES. Producing free software takes time, effort, and money. There are certain courtesies that the authors request, and we strongly urge you to adhere to: \- If requested by the author(s), send a short E-mail note to them if you're actively using the software. Provide details if you have made any noteworthy uses of the material. This helps satisfy their curiousity, and can also help them justify their research to funders (or tenure committees). \- Sending changes, bug-fixes, and improvements to the author(s) to let them incorporate them into the original. This helps prevent the creation of many similar but divergement versions. Some authors ask that changes to the software be clearly documented in a change log. \- All materials developed as a consequence of the use of the software or other materials shall duly acknowledge such use, in accordance with the usual standards of acknowledging credit in academic research. 6\. REPOSITORY COPYRIGHT. The AI Repository is Copyright (c) 1993-94 by Mark Kantrowitz. All rights reserved. Individual files in the CMU AI Repository are owned by their respective copyright holders. No copyright is claimed on the individual files, with the exception of files written by Mark Kantrowitz, including the 0.doc files. We do not claim any form of compilation copyright. Files from the repository, including the 0.doc files, may be freely redistributed, subject to any conditions placed on the files by their copyright holders. The 0.doc files may not be sold for profit or included in commercial documents (e.g., published on CD-ROM, floppy disks, books, magazines, or other print form) without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Permission is expressly granted for major sections of the repository to be made available for file transfer (mirrored) from installations offering unrestricted anonymous file transfer on the Internet, provided the readme.txt file is included intact. The purpose of this copyright notice is to (1) ensure that sales of any CD-ROMs containing the AI Repository in whole or in significant part contribute to the expansion of the repository, and (2) ensure that any for-profit publication of the repository adheres to the copyright restrictions placed on the individual files by their authors/owners. *** [3] Retrieving Files The AI Repository is kept in the Andrew File System (AFS) directory /afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/ai-repository/ai/ and its subdirectories. Files may be retrieved using either AFS or anonymous FTP. If your site runs AFS, you can just cd to this directory and copy the files directly. Many schools, laboratories and corporations now run AFS. Further information about AFS can be obtained by sending email to afs-sales@transarc.com. If your site does not run AFS, you can still get the files by anonymous ftp from ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/ai/ [128.2.206.173] Use username "anonymous" (without the quotes) and typing your email address (in the form "user@host") as the password. (If you try to cd to the /afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/ai-repository/ai/ directory while connected via anonymous ftp, you must cd in one atomic operation, as the CMU security mechanisms prevent access to superior directories from an anonymous ftp. If you use the /user/ai/ alias you won't have any problems.) The following is an example of using ftp to retrieve the software: % ftp ftp.cs.cmu.edu Connected to MULBERRY.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU. 220 MULBERRY.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU FTP server (Version 4.105 of 10-Jul-90 12:07) ready. Name (ftp.cs.cmu.edu:mkant): anonymous 331 Guest login ok, send username@node as password. Password: 230-Filenames can not begin with "/.." . 230-Other than that, everything is ok. 230 User anon logged in. ftp> cd /user/ai 250 Directory path set to /user/ai. ftp> pwd 257 "/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/ai-repository/ai" is current directory. ftp> ls 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening data connection for ls (128.2.222.137,4585). areas copying doc events file_ext.txt lang ls-Rla.gz new ptfai pubs readme.txt todo.txt util 226 Transfer complete. 1152 bytes received in 0.6 seconds (1.9 Kbytes/s) ftp> quit 221 Goodbye. If you will be transfering compressed (gzipped) files, be sure to type the "binary" command before retrieving the files. The "get" command is used to get a single file, and "mget" to retrieve multiple files using wildcards. If you're using the "mget" command, you might want to turn off prompting first by using the "prompt" command. *** [4] Accessing the Repository by World Wide Web (WWW) The AI Repository's home page is http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/Groups/AI/html/repository.html This page includes HTML versions of the AI-related FAQ postings. *** [5] Structure of the Repository The main directories of the AI Repository are as follows: readme.txt This file. ls-Rla.gz The results of doing ls -Rla on the repository. areas/ AI software and other materials organized according to topic or field. copying/ Copies of the GNU GPL and various other copyright notices. doc/ Information related to ftp sites, bitftp, ftpmail, etc. events/ Calendar of events, including conferences, workshops, and other meetings and announcements. file_ext.txt File extensions in use in the repository. html/ Mosaic-related documents, FAQ files, etc. lang/ Programming language implementations, including Lisp, Scheme, and Prolog. ls-Rla.gz The results of running ls -Rla on the repository. ptfai/ Administrative materials related to the AI CD-ROM pubs/ Publications including technical reports, FAQ postings, theses, mailing list archives, etc. util/ Compression and archiving software (gzip, tar, etc.) The repository has standardized on using 'tar' for producing archives of files and 'gzip' for compression. For example, shell archives have been replaced with tar files, and compressed files (.Z) recompressed using GZIP (.gz). GZIP uses the Lempel-Ziv algorithm (LZ77), and generally achieves better compression than LZW (compress), Huffman coding (pack) and adaptive Huffman coding (compact), and is patent free. Implementations exist for VMS, MSDOS, OS/2, Atari, Unix, and Macintosh; see the util/ directory for copies of the sources. Packages that are intended solely for use on a PC or Macintosh may be archived using the formats common on those machines, such as zip, sit, cpt, and hqx. The util/ directory contains tools for manipulating these files on other systems. Due to its size, the repository is split among several disk partitions. So cding to a directory may actually move you to a different partition. Nevertheless, each partition mimics the entire directory structure, so that cd .. will actually work as expected. Further information on a package, such as a description of the contents, mailing lists, E-mail addresses for bug reports, and so on, will be included in a file named 0.doc in the package's directory. *** [6] Bug Reports Bug reports, comments, questions and suggestions concerning the repository should be sent to Mark Kantrowitz . Bug reports, comments, questions and suggestions concerning a particular software package should be sent to the address indicated by the author. Bug reports, comments, questions and suggestions concerning programs in the Lisp section of the repository should also be CCed to Lisp-Utilities-Request@cs.cmu.edu. Please send us copies of any changes or improvements you make to the software, so that we may merge them into the originals. Please be patient -- Mark is an nth-year graduate student, so his thesis work takes priority. But as time permits, he'll try to incorporate your suggestions and improvements into the programs included in the repository. *** [7] Mailing Lists There are several mailing lists associated with the CMU AI Repository. The first set of mailing lists are low-volume moderated mailing lists, and will be used primarily for notification of updates to a particular section of the repository: lisp-announce Notification of updates to the Lisp section scheme-announce Notification of updates to the Scheme section prolog-announce Notification of updates to the Prolog section The first list replaces the old Lisp-Utilities@cs.cmu.edu mailing list. To unsubscribe, send a message to ai+query@cs.cmu.edu with one or more of the following lines subscribe lisp-announce ,  subscribe scheme-announce ,  subscribe prolog-announce ,  in the message body. Matters concerning the repository as a whole or other sections of the repository will be posted to the relevant newsgroups. The AI Repository also has several other lists: lisp-jobs Announcements of Lisp job opportunities ai-jobs Announcements of AI job opportunities prolog-jobs Announcements of Prolog job opportunities ai-postdoc Announcements of AI-related post-doctoral fellowships ai-predoc Announcements of AI-related pre-doctoral fellowships You can subscribe to them in a similar fashion. Resumes should NOT be sent to these lists. To send announcements to these lists, send them to ai+@cs.cmu.edu, where  should be replaced with the relevant mailing list name, e.g. ai+lisp-jobs@cs.cmu.edu. *** [8] Contributing Files to the Repository For a program to be included in the Repository, it must be "freely distributable". The author(s) may retain a copyright on the programs, but must allow anybody to copy and use the files without charge. If the author(s) later decide to commercialize the program, the version included in the Repository will remain available for free. Programs that have been placed in the public domain (e.g., by the author publicly announcing "I place this program in the public domain") may also be included in the repository, since by placing a program in the public domain, the author has given up all rights to the program. A package must, in general, include the source code in the distribution for us to consider adding it to the repository. If you would like to contribute a program or other files to the Repository, please place the materials in ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/ai/new/ and send a message to AI.Repository@cs.cmu.edu giving us permission to include the files in the repository (and on the CD-ROM too, if that is acceptable to you). All contributions must also be accompanied by an unambiguous copyright statement -- either a declaration by the author that the materials are in the public domain, that the materials are subject to the GNU General Public License (cite GPL version), or that the materials are subject to copyright, but the copyright holder grants permission for free use, copying, and distribution. Inclusion of materials in the repository does not modify the author's rights to the work in any way. (If your copyright notice is too restrictive for us to include the files in the repository, we'll let you know.) *** [9] CD-ROM A portion of the contents of the repository is published by Prime Time Freeware on two ISO-9660 CD-ROMs bound into a 224-page book. It sells (list) for $60 US. Each CD-ROM contains approximately 600 megabytes of gzipped archives (more than 2.5 gigabytes uncompressed and unpacked). Sales of the CD-ROM(s) help support the expansion and maintenance of the repository. For further information on the CD-ROM, please contact Prime Time Freeware 370 Altair Way, Suite 150 Sunnyvale, CA 94086, USA Tel: +1 408-433-9662 Fax: +1 408-433-0727 E-mail: ptf@cfcl.com *** [10] Miscellaneous If you find a particular program or publication to be extremely useful, consider donating money to or otherwise supporting the university or laboratory that produced the software, to help them fund further research. If you are interested in supporting the development of free software, the Free Software Foundation (675 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, e-mail gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu, phone +1 617-876-3296) is a leader in the field. If you are interested in helping to maintain parts of the AI Repository, please send mail to ai+volunteer@cs.cmu.edu. Your site must run the Andrew File System and Kerberos cross-realm authentication must be in place between your site and cs.cmu.edu. Currently this only includes the athena.mit.edu realm (in addition to the various CMU realms, of course). ;;; *EOF* 

