Simon Willison argues that LLMs have made the original promise of open source more achievable by dramatically lowering the barrier to understanding and modifying software. He describes using Claude and Codex to quickly clone and build repositories, turning what was once a significant time investment into a matter of minutes. While he hasn't yet become a habitual modifier of software, he sees a clear path toward that future.
Background
Simon Willison is a well-known developer and blogger who frequently writes about AI, open source, and developer tooling. This comment responds to the exe.dev project's stance that developer tools should be open source.
- Source
- Simon Willison
- Published
- Aug 3, 2026 at 11:30 PM
- Score
- 6.0 / 10