Release of Symbolics software at MIT

[The Software Staff of Symbolics at SCRC-TENEX]

Through an agreement between Symbolics, Inc. and MIT's EE/CS department,
Symbolics' Lisp Machine software is now available for use by MIT users.

Symbolics is making available all software that we maintain to MIT
users.  This includes the Symbolics File System, Tape System, Canon
Laser Printer Software, and Font Editor, as well as any other software
that is being developed for distribution to Symbolics customers.  New
releases will be made available to MIT at least as often as to Symbolics
customers.  In practice, MIT will probably be given releases more
often than this, to provide faster response to trouble reports.

Symbolics systems can be distinguished because their system version
numbers are greater than 200; the current system being released is
System 204.  The master copies of the sources from which Symbolics
systems are created are kept at Symbolics; copies of these sources are
being kept on MIT-EECS (the TOPS-20 system of the EE/CS department,
which is providing the disk space to hold these sources).  Please note
that MIT-EECS is a very heavily loaded system, and its routine use
should be avoided.  We expect lisp machine users to be considerate
in this regard.

The sources are on the LIB: structure of the MIT-EECS machine.  The
Symbolics systems are configured to know that all system sources live on
this machine; if you access a system source file with the Meta-.
command or otherwise, the system will connect to MIT-EECS to read in the
file.  This way, Meta-. will find the correct version of the source,
corresponding to the software in the Lisp environment.  Furthermore,
if you do LOAD-PATCHES, the patch files will be searched for on MIT-EECS.

When Symbolics bands for MIT are booted, they say "EE" instead of "MIT"
in the last line of the herald message.  This is because these bands use
a different set of site-configuration files, in order to make the SYS
host be EE instead of AI.  This convention may change in the future.

The MIT-EECS machine requires you to log in before you can access files.
Anyone may log in by using the user name "Anonymous", without giving the
file job a password; this will give you read-access to all of the
sources.  Of course, if you have your own account on MIT-EECS, you may
use that; all users have read-access to all the sources.

We want to provide the same fast response to bugs that MIT Lisp Machine
users are accustomed to.  Therefore, bug reports sent to Symbolics from
MIT will be answered as soon as possible, and patch files will get moved
to MIT-EECS promptly.

In order to make it easy for MIT users to introduce bug fixes and
changes into the Symbolics software, system maintainers at MIT may
modify the copies of the sources that are stored on MIT-EECS.  Symbolics
will normally merge such changes into the master source files at
Symbolics; however, we reserve the right to reject any changes we feel
are incorrect or inappropriate.  When new releases are provided to
MIT-EECS, sources will be copied from Symbolics to MIT-EECS, and any
changes that were rejected will disappear from the sources.  (The source
files on MIT-AI are merged with Symbolics sources only infrequently.)

The administrators of the MIT-EECS machine have decided to control
write-access to these sources, on a per-user basis.  If you feel you'd
like to have access to modify Symbolics sources stored on MIT-EECS, send
mail to the list LISPM-ACCOUNTS@EE.  Please note that this control is
being maintained by MIT-EECS personnel, and not Symbolics personnel.

This software is provided to MIT under the terms of the Lisp System
License Agreement between Symbolics and MIT.  MIT's license to use this
software is non-transferable.  This means that the world loads,
microloads, sources, etc. provided by Symbolics may not be distributed
outside of MIT without the written permission of Symbolics.

System 204 already exists in many forms on MIT machines; some of these
bands have different systems loaded.  People who wish to receive advice
on which software packages would best suit their needs, or who wish
assistance in installing system 204 should send mail to
BUG-LISPM-SCRC@SCRC.

System 204, and all associated software, is now released to users.  It
comes with Symbolics microcode 865, and ZMail 42.  There are a number of
INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES in this software.  The system release announcement
can be found in EE:LIB:<LISPM.DOCUMENTATION>SYSTEM-204.RELEASE and
in AI: LMDOC; SYS204 MSG.