# Devtools must be open source (exe.dev) > Source: > Published: 2026-08-03 15:30:38+00:00 [My comment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156111#49156719) on [Devtools must be open source (exe.dev)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156111) — Hacker News. One of the arguments for open source software for end-users has always been the freedom to examine and modify how that software works. The reality for most people - even expert programmers - has been that the freedom is more about being able to lean on *other people* to do that. Most people can't justify the time commitment needed to read and then modify the code for tools they use very often. I think LLMs have changed that equation in a way that makes the original dream much more feasible. Several times a day I'll prompt regular Claude chat to "Clone x/y from GitHub and tell me how Z works". Getting software to compile in order to start hacking on it used to be enough friction that I often wouldn't bother. Now I treat that as a zero time investment challenge: tell Codex or Claude Code to checkout and build X and then come back ten minutes later and see how it got on. 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. Tags: [hacker-news](https://simonwillison.net/tags/hacker-news), [open-source](https://simonwillison.net/tags/open-source), [ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai), [generative-ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai), [llms](https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms), [ai-assisted-programming](https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-assisted-programming)