| [wtp-dev] Meaning of the "future" milestone target |
Assigning a milestone target of "Future" means the bug or feature request has been fully evaluated and a decision made that it can not be contained any time soon ... such as not in the next yearly release ... so will be marked as "Future". This aides committers so they can filter out "future" bugs when then are looking for bugs to evaluate, as they have already been evaluated. It also aides the community and reporters as then they have a bit more status about the bug. However, there should not be any "mass update" simply to assign untargeted bugs to "Future". An untargeted bug often means "future" in reality, but it perhaps has not been fully evaluated or received much attention yet. A mass update, without full evaluation, would water-down the meaning of "future" and make it less useful as a bucket to put bugs that have been fully evaluated.
Similarly, there should not be any mass updates to untarget a "future" bug or enhancement request. But, naturally at the beginning of a release planning cycle, all 'future' bugs should be re-examined to see if it should be targeted more specifically.