There is a lot of cargo culting going on in this thread. There are 2 reasons to minify Javascript code:
1) Protect your intellectual property by obfuscating code
2) Make web pages load faster by reducing the size of the Javascript file(s) to transfer
Minifying an extension won't make it run faster since extensions are loaded from memory or disk, not from the network (ok, maybe it will be faster by a few nanoseconds?). It could make the initial download of the extension faster but it's only a one time download. Therefore, the only valid reason to minify an extension would be #1. However, it seems Opera is more concerned by user security (it's much easier for a backdoor to go undetected in minified code) than protecting the IP of extension developers.
A source code is not valuable IP ... the people that wrote it are precious. Reading and understanding source code is so hard that it is often cheaper to develop from scratch if you are competitor.
There are exception of course ... but unless a team includes a few Carmacks and the likes its value is often overstated.
No, it's not. It's not fool-proof but it makes it slightly more difficult for other developers to determine what's going on and it certainly makes code re-use harder. The effort that goes into examining obfuscated code is a deterrent.
Comments
There is a lot of cargo culting going on in this thread. There are 2 reasons to minify Javascript code:
1) Protect your intellectual property by obfuscating code
2) Make web pages load faster by reducing the size of the Javascript file(s) to transfer
Minifying an extension won't make it run faster since extensions are loaded from memory or disk, not from the network (ok, maybe it will be faster by a few nanoseconds?). It could make the initial download of the extension faster but it's only a one time download. Therefore, the only valid reason to minify an extension would be #1. However, it seems Opera is more concerned by user security (it's much easier for a backdoor to go undetected in minified code) than protecting the IP of extension developers.
A source code is not valuable IP ... the people that wrote it are precious. Reading and understanding source code is so hard that it is often cheaper to develop from scratch if you are competitor.
There are exception of course ... but unless a team includes a few Carmacks and the likes its value is often overstated.
1) Protect your intellectual property by obfuscating code
There is no protection in minifying an interpreted language. This is an invalid argument.
No, it's not. It's not fool-proof but it makes it slightly more difficult for other developers to determine what's going on and it certainly makes code re-use harder. The effort that goes into examining obfuscated code is a deterrent.
"Slightly" is a good word, it's an extremely low barrier of entry and if somebody wants to read it they will manage to do it.