A distributed control interface for managing interoperability and concurrency among agents and system resources in a computer system. The distributed control interface provides access to system resources to all versions of authorized agents that are capable of interoperating with the resources and do not have concurrency conflicts with agents which are currently accessing those resources. It includes a resource control interface that provides resource access to all versions of recognized agents that do not have concurrency conflicts. An agent control interface manages an associated agent's request to access the resource and determines interoperability conflicts when the resource control interface is unable to do so. The agent control interface may also provide means for providing a limited scope of access to the requesting agent should the agent not be completely interoperable with the resource.
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