Would you be OK with having every website you visit run native byte-code on your computer !? At least for me, it takes some trust to install a native app. I don't trust some companies and would never let them run a binary blob on my computer, still I sometimes visit their web sites, with JavaScript turned off of course. Some sites require JavaScript though, but I can turn on selective parts (using NoScript plugin) and then investigate all the nasty stuff with the browser's built in debugger.

Not to disagree with you, but native apps are extremely popular and well-accepted on smartphones.

The web is a forest, but transparent, so you can see what's behind the trees, while mobile apps are a closed garden.

Political views aside, I think I understand a key difference in that, presuming one wants to run Free (Libre) software, it's relatively easy to do if you are running one of the FSF recommended Linux distributions.

By contrast, if in common usage people are only running software compiled to Web Assembly, then:

1. You probably have some work to do to figure out the licensing of the code running in your browser.

2. The ability to look at the program logic for study or reuse is diminished in practice as compared to the early web when you could view source.

1. is identical on linux distros. How many licenses are you using right now? Probably 20+ distinct licenses as a lowball guess. It's not easy to figure this out, and if it's something you and others really want, i'm sure a standard could be thought up to be able to on-demand get a list of software licenses used in a project which could then be built into browsers similar to sourcemaps.

2. might be more possible with WASM than it is with minified JS since WASM has a text mode which is very readable.

1. Eh, if I'm running, say, Ubuntu and haven't turned on the non-free stuff I can make some reasonable assumptions about my baseline rights.

2. I don't think anyone is claiming minified JS is awesomely transparent. WASM is certainly worse than the unobfuscated, unminified JS, which until not long ago was the norm.

WebAssembly in itself is not an enemy of freedom, as even Richard Stallman would agree.

The bigger problem, which is also a problem with web scripts in general, is that browsers and script distributors generally make no effort to inform users about what scripts are running, whether they are proprietary or free software, etc.

Mozilla should fix this!

I wish that:

- Wasm (and JS) should have metadata (loadable before executing the code) declaring the license, and pointing to the source

- Browsers should whether site is open source (per OSI), and allow to block non-open JS. Or fake access to any sensitive APIs for non-open code (can still do DOM interactivity)

The builds should ideally be reproducible, and community-based third-party sites verify the output comes from said source. This would be another badge/warning/setting.