[axiomabsolute]

> The Go maintainers have conflated what a library is and where a library is. That's an important distinction that should not be glossed over like this.

I think this depends on whether GitHub treats URLs as just URLs, or more generally as URIs. Based on their documentation [0], they refer to them as URIs, which means they are intended to represent both Location and Identity [1]. The domain represents the "where", the repository path is the "what".

They should be able to change their URL schema relatively easily, by including the appropriate redirects - a mapping from the old schema to the new. Which is exactly the strategy they discuss in the HTTP Redirects section.

(edit) Formatting

[0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Identifier

[1] : https://developer.github.com/v3/#http-redirects

[paulddraper]

All URLs are URIs.

[donatj]

Not true in practice.