People minify js files because they can.<p>When you already have a pipeline like gulp or grub (and if you are developing JavaScript, you should), adding minification is just one more line of code. So, why not minify if it doesn&#x27;t represent any effort and it could mean better performance? Also, usually, developers don&#x27;t have access to the production webserver.<p>Most of the time, people are to busy to analyze all the pros and cons of every action they do.<p>Said that, if Debian is an open source OS, then yes, they should have access to the unminified code of the applications they include. Or, at least, the sourcemaps.