Bjorn Freeman-Benson has gone online with Part 2 of the article on the lessons the Eclipse foundation learnt while working on the Callisto project. In this installment, Bjorn talk about the problem of distributed control.

While all the projects in Eclipse, top-level or otherwise, follow certain Eclipse-wide rules and policies, overall they are independent. According to Bjorn, coordinating ten projects for the Callisto simultaneous release was a tough task, as many projects had to change their initial schedules to fit the milestones of the others. “We had to change the length of iterations and milestones to a common six week schedule, and work towards a common ramp-down process of shorter and shorter release candidates. In addition, we had to alter the dates of mid-year releases,” he says.

The set of required changes to participate in Callisto were kept to the minimum, nevertheless, Bjorn says he learnt that the business case for cooperation needed to be made more strongly.

“Next year’s simultaneous release Europa will probably require a little more schedule and process synchronization from the participating projects, especially in the end game, but we will work hard to keep it minimal. And we will attempt to mollify concerns by making the requirements clearer, earlier, but overall one always has to relinquish a bit of sovereignty in return for participating in any joint effort,” he says.