> Minifying stops users from copying the code your site uses for their own sites
Exactly. There are countless JS-powered sites that for any multitude of reasons don't want it to be easy to extract their code. Ignoring whether or not that's "right" or ethical, those sites are fully within their rights to make it as difficult as possible to duplicate the work that they've put in to create their platform.
I would imagine if you asked most C-level and legal teams "is the code on your website something you want people to be able to copy at will?", 95%+ would say they don't want that to be possible, and you might even spur some of them to force their developers to spend time making it _even harder_ to copy.
Unfortunately, the web isn't the free/public/open-source utopia it once was, because a large majority of business takes place online. Sure there are niche sites that still cater to such ideals, but a majority of the population couldn't give a rat's ass if it's easy to copy the JS from Facebook/Amazon/YouTube/etc.
Exactly. There are countless JS-powered sites that for any multitude of reasons don't want it to be easy to extract their code. Ignoring whether or not that's "right" or ethical, those sites are fully within their rights to make it as difficult as possible to duplicate the work that they've put in to create their platform. I would imagine if you asked most C-level and legal teams "is the code on your website something you want people to be able to copy at will?", 95%+ would say they don't want that to be possible, and you might even spur some of them to force their developers to spend time making it _even harder_ to copy.
Unfortunately, the web isn't the free/public/open-source utopia it once was, because a large majority of business takes place online. Sure there are niche sites that still cater to such ideals, but a majority of the population couldn't give a rat's ass if it's easy to copy the JS from Facebook/Amazon/YouTube/etc.