W3C position on URIs http:// vs. https://

Hi SemWeb community,

One of my projects is considering making some of our ontologies accessible to customers. As part of these considerations, we have been discussing resolving ontology references (e.g. for imports) which lead us to some lengthy arguments about http:// vs. https:// as protocol part in our URIs (primarily ontology URIs, potentially element URIs as well).

I am aware of a 2016 post (https://www.w3.org/blog/2016/05/https-and-the-semantic-weblinked-data/) stating that W3C currently considers http and https to be “equivalent” for w3c.org. However, the security guys I am working with are not too happy with this as using a http URI for downloading imported ontologies is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack.

I was unable to find any more recent statement by the W3C on the use of http vs. https. Specifically, I’d be interested to understand if this community (and the W3C) intend to stick with http for the foreseeable future, of if there’s any plans to migrate some/all URIs (e.g. ontology URIs but not element URIs) to https ? Would be nice for us to understand what “the outer world” plans so we can maybe take this as a blueprint for our own guidance on URIs.

Best regards,
Thomas