Design Issues

Architectural and philosophical points

These statements of architectural principle explain the thinking behind the specifications. These are personal notes by Tim Berners-Lee: they are not endorsed by W3C on anyone else. They are aimed at the technical community, to explain reasons, provide a framework to provide consistency for future developments, and avoid repetition of discussions once resolved.

Preface (1998-10-01)
Web 1.0 - A global web of documents and data
- The Stack of Specifications (2002-07-29)
- - How to write a Specification (1999-05-24)
  - Working despite Ambiguity (2012-10-15) [2017]
  - Philosophical Engineering and Ownership of URIs (2002-07-29) [2017]
  - The Many Meanings of Open (2013-01-15) [2017]
- Levels of Abstraction: Net, Web, Graph (2007-10-23)
- Web Architecture from 50,000 feet (1998-09-04)
  - Principles of Design (1998-09-01)
  - The Web Model: Information hiding and URI syntax (19998-01-29)
- Axioms of Web architecture: URIs (1996-12-19)
  - Fragment identifiers(1997-04-08)
  - Using Relative URIs (2011)
  - Webizing an existing application(2017-03-01)
  - What do HTTP URIs identify?2002-09-01)
  - What HTTP URIs identify? II (2005-06-01)
  - A Short History of the term "Resource" 2009-08-01
- The Myth of Names and Addresses (1996-12-19)
- Generic resources1996-03-01@@
- Metadata Architecture 1997-01-06
  - Dictionaries in the Library? On the two-level system design error2000-01-01
- The meaning of a document - grounding in a global namespace (1999-01-01)
  - The Interpretation of an XML document (2002-01-01)
- Mandatory extensions: A fundamental design need(1999? in progress)
- Extensible languages and web evolution(Feb 1998)
- Evolvability (1998-05-01)
  - Modularity (2007-10-01)
  - Mandatory extensions (2000-01-01)
  - HTML and XML and XHTML (2008-05-19)
Web 2.0, Security and CORS
- Roadmap for Web Services (2009-08-27)(see WS arch WG)
- Web Security: (2015)
  1. "HTTPS Everywhere" considered harmful> (2015-03-28)
  2. Model Real Trust (2015-03-28)
  3. The Same Origin Policy - Origin Granularity (2015-03-28)
  4. Client-Side Certificatess (2015-03-28)
- CORS - Browser Distrust of Web Apps and its fallout. 2018-2021
Web 3.0, The Semantic Web and Solid
- A roadmap to the Semantic Web (1998-09-09)
- What the semantic Web isn't but can represent (1998-09-01)
- Connecting the Sciences (2004-01-04)
- Linked Data (2006-07-27)
  - Read-Write Linked Data (2009-10-11)
  - Goals for A Human-Data Interface 2010-07-06 and (2019-07-07)
  - Solid: Socially Aware Cloud Storage (2009-08-17)
  - Live data Adding real-time sync (2021-10-20)
  - Linked Data Shapes, Forms and Footprints (2019-04-26)
  - Pod Stuff: What's in a Pod, and how is it indexed? (2022-01-01)
  - Mapping between HTTP URLs and filenames on a server (2015-04-10) [2017]
  - Icing on the cake pattern: URIS of services and metadata close to the URI of the target (2016-12-01) [2017]
  - "Paper Trail" -- build social and commercial systems out of linked immutable documents 1999-02-01
  - Conversations and State - linking the two models 2000-11-01
- Putting Government Data on the Web (2009-06-01)
- RDF and Relational databases (1998-09-01)
- Conceptual Graphs and the semantic Web2001-01-01
- Why RDF model is not exactly the XML model (1999-01-01)
- Identity: how to identify what in RDF (2008-01-01)
- Using labels to give semantics to tags (2006-11-01)
- Semantics and Interpretation (and digital signature) (1999-12-01) Philosophical bits
- Logic and the semantic web (1999)
- - Interpretaion properties for units and languages (2000-02-28) [2017]
  - When use a literal for a URI in Linked Data (2017-11-05) [2017]
- The RDF-diff problem - representing changes to graphs; The Delta ontology (2001-01-01, 2004)
- A quick look at iCalendar (2001-10-01)
- My Top Ten terms (2009-08-27) [2017]
- Rules and facts: Inference engines and the Semantic Web(2000-01-01)
- Limiting the damage of an inconsistency (2010-06-26)
- Changes needed to the RDF core in 2010 (2000-01-01)
- Notation3: Logic and Rules on RDF - showing it is possible(2000-10-01)
  - Design alternatives considered in Notation3 (2002-03-01)
  - Reification of RDF and N3 (2004-12-31)
- The Semantic Clipboard (2004-01-01)
- Feeds: Blogs, Podcasts and the like (2021-01-01)
Non-Web arcitectures

Blockchain - sometimes unfortunateley called "Web3" (2017-10-31)

Legal
- Filtering and censorship - more philosophical than technical: is metadata a good thing? (1997-12-19)
- No Snooping on the Internet (2009-03-09)
- Net Neutrality: Act now to save the internet as we know it ( 2017-12-10)
- - Links and Laws - what does a hypertext link imply? (1997-04-01)
  - Myths about Links (April 97)
  - Persistent Domains- an idea for persistence of URIs(2000-10-01)
  - New Top Level Domains .mobi and .xxx Considered Harmful (2004-04-01) [2017]
- General Computation, Digital Rights Management, and FOSS ( 2017-12-10)
Web and Society
- Fractal web, fractal society (1998-12-31)
- - Cultures and boundaries2007
  - Linked data is like a Bag of Chips 2010-05-26
  - A "Stretch Friend" (2007) 2017-01-01
- User Interface in a consistent world(1997-02-06)
  - User agent watch points -interpreting HTTP(1999-12-01)
  - Intuitive hypertext editing1998-04-01
  - User Interface Tips Such simple things ( 2016-12-15) [2017]
- Pretty Print for DevX, Tests and SCS 2023-10-03
- The Intimacy Gradient 2022-03-13,
- Beneficent Apps 2018-01-13,
- Charlie: An AI that works for you 2017-01-01
- Singularity 13: A Story of Corporate Performance Optimization 2017-03-01
- Inference over Private Data 2023-11-05
- Link in Bio: Personal data which is Public 2024-05-16
- The Dysfunction of Social Networks 2024-07-27
- The Good Things on the Internet 2024-07-27

Historical only: archive of obsolete posts