from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
forward compatibility
forward compatible
forwards compatibility
forwards compatible
<jargon> The ability to accept input from later versions of
itself.
Forward compatibility is harder to achieve than {backward
compatibility}, since, in the backward case, the input format
is know whereas a forward compatible system needs to cope
gracefully with unknown future features. An example of future
compatibility is the stipulation that a {web browser} should
ignore {HTML tags} it does not recognise.
See also {extensible}.
(2003-06-23)