Cool URIs Don't Change: A 1998 Plea for Web Stability

Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)

Tim Berners-Lee's 1998 essay argues that URIs should never change, blaming human decisions rather than technical limitations. He dissects common excuses—site reorganizations, file moves, CGI scripts, and the hope that URNs will fix everything—and offers practical advice: leave dates, authors, subjects, and file extensions out of URLs, and design them to last decades. The piece remains a foundational reference for web architecture and link rot prevention.