Minify packaged javascript libraries

The packaged JavaScript libraries - Prototype and script.aculo.us - which are currently bundled with Rails are provided in their full, uncompressed, "development" versions:

• controls.js (34716B)
• dragdrop.js (31103B)
• effects.js (38675B)
• prototype.js (129738B)

(4 JS files weighing in at 234kB, as of Rails 2.2.2, Prototype 1.6.0.3)

Using the freely available Yahoo! YUI Compressor with its default settings, the same 4 files become:

• controls.js (21542B)
• dragdrop.js (19256B)
• effects.js (24677B)
• prototype.js (74956B)

(4 JS files weighing in at 140kB)

That's about a 40% reduction in file size with supposedly no changes to functionality.

I realize that applications should probably ultimately be moving toward hosted libraries (using Google AJAX Libraries API, for example), but as long as the Rails framework is bundling libraries, shouldn't we try to lessen their impact as much as possible? Further, I'd argue that the uncompressed versions of those libraries are not necessary to provide with the Rails framework at all, as we HIGHLY encourage people to not modify those files directly. In fact, each new release of Rails seems to overwrite those files with the latest JS framework version, so we instead endorse using a application.js to add any custom functionality that may be required.

This seems like a relatively simple change that has a large, positive application performance impact.

Thoughts?