Claim◆Article

LLMs have changed the equation in a way that makes the original open-source dream of examining and modifying code much more feasible.

The author's central thesis: large language models have shifted the cost/benefit of actually reading and modifying code, reviving the original open-source dream. ✦ AI generated

Author (Hacker News comment) · Simon Willison's Weblog · 2026-08-03 · original ↗

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I think LLMs have changed that equation in a way that makes the original dream much more feasible.

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✳ LLM

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Evidence · 1

LLMs and modern sandbox primitives create a new opportunity for extensible software on the web, enabling developers to build solid core applications that users can safely extend via LLM-generated extensions.Jeremy Morrell · Simon Willison's Weblog · conf 60%

Context · 1

In practice, the freedom of open source mostly means leaning on other people to do the examining and modifying, because most people can't justify the time commitment to read and modify code themselves.Author (Hacker News comment) · Simon Willison's Weblog · conf 60%

Extends · 1

One of the arguments for open source software for end-users has always been the freedom to examine and modify how that software works.Author (Hacker News comment) · Simon Willison's Weblog · conf 60%

This moment responds to

gives example → I routinely prompt Claude to clone a GitHub repo and explain how part of it works.Author (Hacker News comment) · Simon Willison's Weblog gives example → Getting software to compile in order to hack on it used to be enough friction that I often wouldn't bother, but now I treat building and checkout as a zero-time-investment challenge delegated to Codex or Claude Code.Author (Hacker News comment) · Simon Willison's Weblog extends → I'm not habitually modifying the software I use yet, but I can see a path to that which didn't exist a year or so ago.Author (Hacker News comment) · Simon Willison's Weblog