> Standardize on the term URL. URI and IRI are just confusing. In practice a single algorithm is used for both so keeping them distinct is not helping anyone.
And while not everything in their URL spec is universally applicable, that's probably one of the good points. Nowadays, if people mean or want to allow URNs (quite rare), they'll generally explicitly specify it instead of relying on the URI term.
Browser makers have a clear opinion on this:
> Standardize on the term URL. URI and IRI are just confusing. In practice a single algorithm is used for both so keeping them distinct is not helping anyone.
https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#goals
And while not everything in their URL spec is universally applicable, that's probably one of the good points. Nowadays, if people mean or want to allow URNs (quite rare), they'll generally explicitly specify it instead of relying on the URI term.