Some of it depends on the nature of the URI though. The article is about linked resources, but a lot of URI usage isn't really about linked resources. Many of these can change reasonably.
For example, is there any harm in changing where that contact us form points to? Do you have to maintain the contact us forms API to be backwards compatible forever? This really depends on what you are doing.
I agree with the article as it relates to documents for the most part. There are cases where maintaining URL backwards compatibility is a problem due to unforeseen dead ends. However, for the most part it shouldn't be. However, URIs needs for persistence varies so widely that I don't know one can generalize much beyond that.
> For example, is there any harm in changing where that contact us form points to?
The point could more be made: "Why not keep that URL the same?"
It's trivial to do technically, and there's no advantage to be had from moving back and forth between foo.com/contact and foo.com/contact-us. If the URL of your company's contact form gets published in a book, would that change your mind?
Sorry I was misunderstood. I was talking about the URL where the form is submitted, not the URL of the form. For the URL of the form, it's generally desirable to keep it the same all things being equal because this doesn't break other people's links.
But where it is a form submission target, the only reason to care is if you are accepting third party form submission. But we are no longer talking about hypertext resources at that point which is my main point.
For example, is there any harm in changing where that contact us form points to? Do you have to maintain the contact us forms API to be backwards compatible forever? This really depends on what you are doing.
I agree with the article as it relates to documents for the most part. There are cases where maintaining URL backwards compatibility is a problem due to unforeseen dead ends. However, for the most part it shouldn't be. However, URIs needs for persistence varies so widely that I don't know one can generalize much beyond that.