Welcome to OpenCyc version 0.7b. OpenCyc is the open source version of the Cyc Knowledge Base. Included with the release is a free binary version of the Cyc Knowledge Server. The Cyc Knowledge Server includes an inference engine, a knowledge base browser and an API for writing programs in other high-level languages that access and use the OpenCyc knowledge base.

At its most basic level, you can do only two things with the OpenCyc Knowledge Base: you can tell it things (assert facts and rules) and you can ask it things (query). You cannot (in its purest use) directly tell the knowledge base (e.g. within the rules you assert) "things to do". Aside from the expressivity of the knowledge base (you can tell it almost anything), the power comes from OpenCyc's ability:

• to "know" things you never told it (because others have, over many years),
• to "know" things it was never told (through inference and heuristics modules), and
• to independently draw upon the right combination of knowledge to bring to bear on a problem.

A Cyc application is typicallly made up of several parts: the base of facts and rules, a set of queries (or partially complete queries that you might call "query templates"), and an external program (written in SubL, Java, Python, etc.) that you use to interact with the knowledge base and with the user. The external program part of your application should handle posing queries and asserting new facts and rules.

NOTE: If you are expecting to enter some of your knowledge using English dialog, you'll need to wait until OpenCyc version 1.0 is released. If you're expecting to "test" OpenCyc's level of intelligence by asking random common sense questions, you'll have to wait longer than that. OpenCyc currently contains only definitional assertions that position concepts in the ontology and semantically constrain their use within assertions. After version 1.0 is released, work will begin on including more common sense rules. It is a goal of the OpenCyc project that the majority of Cyc's content be migrated to OpenCyc over the next several years. Help of various kinds from volunteers will make this happen sooner rather than later.

Here's what's new since version 0.6b.

New Features

• The first OpenCyc release for Win32 OSes (Windows NT/2000/XP)
• Integrated planner, available via API
• Common sense terms are distinguished from implementation constants
• Support for remote access to OpenCyc server
• Support for `:' in constant names, in preparation for namespace support

New Documentation

• Welcome screen with QuickStart walkthroughs
• First release of OE Handbook
• New tutorials for inference and efficient OE
• List of constants added/removed since v0.6b