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What exactly is the difference between epics and (group) milestones?

@victorwu
As this question was not answered by you since a week, I'll repost it for generat discussion.

Shared features:

  • both are visible in the road map
  • both link to issues
  • both have start and end dates
  • both have a title and description text
  • both have thumbs-up capabilities
  • both will exist on a group and project level

Only in epics:

  • have comments
  • sub-epics
  • labels
  • participants

Only in milestones:

  • burndown chart
  • link to merge requests

(Please correct that list if I missed important points. It already includes settled future features.)

So from a technical standpoint, I don't see any big differences. Either feature: milestones as well as epics, could be enhanced to fulfill the needs of the other. Currently, I only see a marketing issue. Epics are GitLab Ultimate, whereas milestones are available to everyone. Having a duplicated feature shouldn't be the goal.

Please explain what differences GitLab sees between milestones and epics.