Summary

  • HTTP 404 reports no current representation while leaving the duration open; 410 Gone tells the recipient the origin considers the loss likely permanent.
  • Early HTTP/1.1 specifications invited link-editing clients, with user approval, to remove references to a gone address. Later specifications kept the maintenance notice and left the recipient to decide what to do.

A dead link can be a mystery or a message. The first says a page is missing. The second says its publisher has put away the furniture and would appreciate it if everyone stopped sending guests to the old address. HTTP gave these moods different numbers: 404 for an unresolved absence and 410 for a likely permanent departure. One is a shrug; the other has the formality of a letter.

The HTTP/1.0 specification, RFC 1945, published in May 1996, listed 404 Not Found. It made no promise about whether the condition would last. Its status-code list had no 410. The missing page might return tomorrow, have moved without a forwarding address, or have been deliberately retired. A client receiving that answer could not read the site's intentions from the number alone.

The next year's HTTP/1.1 specification, RFC 2068, added 410 Gone to the vocabulary. It described a resource no longer available at the server, with no known forwarding address, and treated the condition as permanent. Its most striking sentence addressed clients that could edit links: after the user's approval, they should delete references to the old address. The server was not deleting someone else's bookmark by remote control. It was sending a notice that a link editor might present to its human owner.

The reason was ordinary website housekeeping. RFC 2068 described 410 as a signal that the site's owners wanted remote references removed. A limited-time promotion or a page for someone no longer at the site might leave such a trace. It also left the webmaster discretion over which vanished addresses received a 410 and for how long. The web had no global obituary registry. A site could keep a note at the old door when it knew which door had been there.

RFC 2616 in June 1999 carried the same suggestion for link-editing clients, still requiring user approval. That detail is an early glimpse of a web in which tools might help authors repair their outbound references. The origin could state its intention; someone maintaining a separate document had to accept the edit. A status code crossed the network. Ownership of the referring page stayed where it was.

By RFC 7231 in 2014, the explicit instruction to delete links had disappeared from the 410 section. The maintenance purpose remained: the origin could notify recipients that it considered a resource intentionally unavailable and wanted remote links removed. The standard also explained the comparison with 404: use the more definite status when the origin knows the condition is likely permanent. This is a statement about the resource at that origin, delivered to whoever asks for it.

The web later added a way to send the invitation before closing time. RFC 8594, published in 2019, defined the Sunset response header for a URI likely to become unresponsive at a future date. Its example archive might answer 410 after the advertised date if it remembers its old identifiers; if it lacks that memory, it might answer 404. The header gives consumers advance notice so they can plan a move. The old status codes still describe what an actual request finds.

RFC 9110, the 2022 HTTP semantics specification, keeps the arrangement. 404 leaves the duration of absence open; 410 conveys likely permanence and an owner’s wish to clean up remote links. Both responses can be cached heuristically unless controls say otherwise. The origin controls the answer it gives about its address. The author of a separate page controls that page's references. The distinction is small, and it has kept a very large pile of bookmarks from becoming someone else's editable property.

Every closed page leaves a social problem behind it: the invitations are still circulating. 410 is the web's courteous way to send a change of plans. It can post the letter on the door. The people holding the invitations decide whether to cross out the address.