However, bugs like [2] suggest to me that the Chrome and Firefox teams do not place an especially high priority on readability and debuggability with source maps in plain old JavaScript. Basically, it's impossible to use Chrome Devtools to see original variable names from the source file (e.g. 'jquery.js') instead of the minified file (e.g. 'jquery.min.js') mapped by the source-map file. This essentially makes source maps useless for debugging complex code and has been a known issue for almost two years.
The most recent comment in that ticket notes work is blocked until a new version of the sourcemap spec is shipped, but the linked resources indicate there hasn't been any public activity on them in three weeks with the Sterland proposal [3] and three months with the Fitzgerald proposal [4].
If keeping the web open source is indeed a priority of Google and Mozilla, then why haven't more resources been allocated to develop those specifications?
In brief, the lack of urgency for bugs like [2] suggests to me that Google and Mozilla don't take "The JavaScript Trip" described by Stallman [5] seriously. I fear that wasm could make it much worse.
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1. https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/TextFormat...
2. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=327092
3. https://gist.github.com/asterland/edf028ed7947c8c258d1
4. https://github.com/fitzgen/source-map-rfc/blob/scopes-and-bi...