Research · Berners-Lee, W3C, 1998
Cool URIs don't change
web architecture note
Supports keeping the identifier apart from the name: a name may change and an address with it, but what was once identified stays identified, and nothing is given the identifier of a thing that has gone.
Read Cool URIs don't change · retrieved 2026-09-27
What it informs — 4
- enforcedAn identifier names one thing, and never a second
- enforcedAn address is a label's, made once
- enforcedA composition a reader manifests has an address, is held before it binds, and enters the ground only by proposal
- enforcedProse names only what the registry holds
This source is what the model was built from. It does not itself commit the model to anything — a commitment does, and the ones it informs are named above.