The "problem" with anon cvs at common-lisp.net was the copy/past example:

# For reasonably modern clients: cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous:anonymous@common-lisp.net:/project/<project-name>/ cvsroot co <module>

apparently :pserver:anonymous:anonymous... only works for some cvs clients. Anyway this works for downloading Fomus:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@common-lisp.net:/project/fomus/cvsroot login cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@common-lisp.net:/project/fomus/cvsroot co fomus

-rick