I think Steve's just not gotten the mail yet -- he's west-coast USA, and some peolle do leave their computers over the weekend. (I don't understand that one, but people are weird some times... :)

To check out via CVS is trivial. In your shell, do:

export CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs.perl.org:/cvs/public
cvs co parrot
[download]

and you're good to go. (Make it setenv if that's your thing, or just throw it all after CVS's -d switch if you'd prefer) We're set up to handle anonymous CVS for checkout purposes just fine. You only need an account if you want to check in to the repository. (Which then does mean being on the list, getting an account, having someone say OK, and all that)