Statement of Purpose and Disclaimer

The anonymous area on hmivax.humgen.upenn.edu is maintained as a public service
to the scientific community.  It is intended to serve as a source of public
domain software and information of use to members of this community,
particularly in the areas of genetics and molecular biology.  While reasonable
efforts are made to maintain this service, no warranty is made by any person
associated with this facility, the University of Pennsylvania, or the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute, that the information available is accurate or
current, or that the software available will function in any particular
fashion.  In addition, we cannot accept any responsibility for any damages
arising directly or indirectly from use of information or software obtained
here.

All files available in the anonymous area are, to the best or our knowledge,
freeware  or shareware.  In keeping with the goals of this facility and the
regulations governing use if the Internet, no commercial software may be placed
here, nor may this service be used for any commercial purposes.


                              Retrieval of Files

Files may be retrieved from the public directories over the Internet by means
of anonymous FTP.  Since many implementations of FTP are available for
different systems, the specific capabilities of your system and modes of
transfer available to you may vary.  In general, documents and source code may
be transferred as ASCII files, while executable images require binary transfer. 
If you have the appropriate compiler on your system, it is usually best to
transfer source code and recompile it at your site, as problems often arise
during attempts to transfer executable images.

While we make reasonable efforts to insure that software and information posted
here are freely available and perform reasonable functions, we cannot guarantee
the performance of any software or the accuracy of any information, nor can we
accept responsibility for the consequences of use of anything retrieved from
this facility.  As always, when you download *anything* test it in a restricted
environment to insure that it performs its intended function safely before
using it where it could cause harm to your system or data.

Many files are archived using a compression algorithm to minimize the space
consumed by the information.  These files must be uncompressed in order to
generate a useful version.  The type of compression used varies from system to
system, and is often signified by the extension of the archived file.  For
example, the .UUE extension is used to designate files compressed with the
UUENCODE program; these must be uncompressed using UUDECODE before use. 
Compression and uncompression utilities are available in the public domain or
as shareware from many sources; some of the common programs are archived here. 
In general, archived files may be transferred as ASCII files.

Many groups of related files are accompanied by an uncompressed
documentation file which explains what the compressed files contain, and how to
get and use them.  Look for files with the .TXT or .DOC extension, or names
containing README or HELP.


                           Leaving Files for Others

If you wish to upload a file for use by others, please feel free to do so.  If
possible, try to use an archiving utility which is available here, or supply a
copy of the utility to us.  In addition, please include some kind of
documentation describing what the file(s) do.

Please upload all files to the [.NEWFILES] directory.  They will be archived,
if necessary, and moved to the appropriate directory as soon as we get a
chance.  Please do not upload any software that cannot be distributed freely.

We reserve the right to remove software which is not being used, which we
consider inappropriate to the purpose of this facility, or for which there is no
space.


                                   General

Please exercise common sense and courtesy when using this facility.  In
particular, please try to limit use to low demand hours (usually evenings and
weekends), and do not upload large numbers of files which are of little use to
the community at large.

If you encounter any problems with use of this facility or with any files you
retrieved from here, please send e-mail describing the problem and
circumstances to bailey@hmivax.humgen.upenn.edu as soon as possible.

Thank you for your cooperation.  We hope you find the resources here useful in
your work.