Upon checking-in a file, RCS by default deletes the working copy (see section on working file) of the file. To view, compile or distribute the file enter the following to make a working copy of the file available:

$ co our_file.txt
RCS/our_file.txt,v  -->  our_file.txt
revision 1.1 (unlocked)
done

The file is now available in the current working directory but is unlocked (see section on unlocked) and therefore read-only. The file is read-only because the revision of the file would need to be locked (see section on locking). The file is actually unlocked, as RCS outputs above. It could have been checked-out with the more explicit check-out command specifying the -u option:

$ co -u our_file.txt
RCS/our_file.txt,v  -->  our_file.txt
revision 1.1 (unlocked)
done