https://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2025-06-00123-EN.html
Three weeks ago, Youtuber Christian 'Perifractic' Simpson announced in a video that he had received an offer to take over Commodore B.V., the owner of the remaining Commodore trademark rights. In a second video published on June 28 he announced the completed takeover: A group of unnamed angel investors has acquired the company for a low seven-figure sum. He himself is now the acting CEO, but the purchase price has not yet been paid - the company is still looking for investors.
In the half-hour video, Simpson lists a whole series of former Commodore employees (Michael Tomczyk, Bil Herd, David Pleasance, support staff such as James Harrison and Hans Olsen) or actor Thomas Middleditch ("Silicon Valley") as future "advisors". A financial participation of the community is not yet possible, as the international legal hurdles are too high. Commodore plans to revive the time before social networks and artificial intelligence, when computer technology was still considered a utopia rather than the scourge of mankind, with new "retro-futuristic" products. The years around the turn of the millennium are cited as a model several times.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Tuesday July 01, @12:26AM
Quite a while ago I mentioned that I had a journal entry on the topic of "post-retro computing" in mind. And someone asked me to please write it, as they'd be eager to read it. I have to apologize, specifically to them, that reality seems to develop faster than my thoughts on what to put into the journal. The basic gist was that we had retro-computing, where gear was pulled from cellars and scrapyards and made to run again for sheer enjoyment of the old technology, much like with classic cars. Then, a wave of neo-retro computing came along, and brought us new kit that resembles the old gear, like the Commander X16 or the Spectrum Next. This seems to cater a desire to tinker with readily available gear that can be grasped with a mindset like in the early days. My assumption (calling it a "vision" would be a little far fetched...) was that this would eventually develop into something actually useful: Computing technology that can, at the expense of performance, be fully understood by a single person, because it is simple enough and acts in a deterministic way.
The majority of automation tasks falls in that category, and these are often mission critical tasks where the precise knowledge what will happen in any given clock cycle should be there. Sensitive data handling might be a thing too. Not having gigabytes of a mostly opaque software stack can help there. The cutoff point is probably somewhere along the IBM PC - Mac Plus - Acorn Archimedes line of hardware and (Microware) OS/9 and early Mac Systems in terms of software complexity.
I don't know what the ultimate plan for the new Commodore is, but putting serious money into what was a hobbyist pastime until yesterday is certainly a step along the way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01, @05:08AM (2 children)
Didn't a couple of siblings make a movie about that?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday July 01, @05:11AM (1 child)
I don't know. Did they? I don't recall such a film here in Europe but I am not a frequent movie goer.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01, @10:58AM
"The Matrix"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Tuesday July 01, @10:37AM (2 children)
Perifractic is a bit of an acquired taste, I'm personally not a fan at all. That said I'm not a fan of a lot of the retrotubers. Most of them seem clueless to the machines and just have some late to the party nerdfetish.
Very unclear what he or they will do with it. My best guess is Merch. Selling the name to everyone willing to pay to have it on their products. Trying to scrape up licensing fees from various retro-projects.
There are already a lot of new versions of the C64, it is after this we are talking about since the Amiga as noted is in a separate company and nobody cares about the commodore calculators, the vic20 (if that is included) and probably not the PET (if that is included) either. At least you can get C64 still. The others? Rare is the word. There are complete board recreations, kits, complete fpga version and so forth. I wonder what it means for them.
I doubt they are going to start up production of the SID chip again, if they do I would forgive everything and become an instant fan (at least in theory). I'm still not watching his annoying youtube videos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01, @11:46AM (1 child)
But how is he going to raise the funds to produce SID chips? And how are you going to learn the dangers of browsing the 'net without a VPN??
(Score: 2) by mrpg on Wednesday July 02, @01:05AM
Or how important it is for you to use this DNS provider so you can save 100 ms off a dns query.