centericq-4.8.6 make failure

[Jude DaShiell]

I tried doing a make on centericq-4.8.6 and got an error with text editor
which proved fatal on slackware 8.0.0.  I fumbled through cvs and checked
out another copy more current and had identical bad results traying to
make that version too.  It's possible having done that with cvs broke the
speakup checkout script since when I tried running that one afterwards
figuring might as well salvage something from this loss, checkout returns
with bad interpreter and dies.  What I had done before running the first
checkout script was cvs init since I don't think an initialization
directory was there.  Does anyone know how to properly make .cvspass files
and what should go into them?