pouët.net

I think this might be worth sharing here: Christian Simpson, owner of the YouTube channel Retro Recipes, bought the Commodore brand.

- heise article in German language
- YouTube video containing announcement in English language
- RS News article in English language

💭 Now that Christian Simpson has acquired the Commodore brand and gathered a team of former engineers, could it be more than just slapping a logo on a t-shirt? Maybe a new retro-style computer is in the works—something like Atari did with the Atari 400 Mini, or how the Polish Atari demoscene community is building the RM 800XL — a modern reincarnation of a classic from the '80s.

A machine with retro spirit but loaded with HDMI, USB, and maybe even FPGA under the hood — that would be a glorious comeback for Commodore. I'm definitely looking forward to what they cook up 😎

Apollo 68080 core with enhanced SAGA+ ;D

fuck yeah

Interesting...

I expect they will license out. So, Gideon’s Ultimate 1541 2+ will be called Commodore Ultimate 1541 2+. Ultimate 64 will be called Commodore Ultimate 64. TheC64 will be called Commodore TheC64. Mega65 will be called Commodore 65. Etc. All for a small fee. That’s my max expectation. Official Commodore branded mini PCs from Ali, tshirts, socks and zippo lighters I don’t care about.

He's doing a great job, with some other retro YouTubers, to keep old tech alive. How funny we're still tinkering with these machines, and we were around when they were brand new and shiny. Now we're like those folks who collect and fix old radios. Which isn't bad at all, it's just... weird.

I dont know. When you're riding a dead horse its still a dead horse. The guy needs some good amount of money if he wants to revive this brand or is this just a midlife crisis thingy?

cringe

I have hard time not reading the title as ”Ned Flanders bough a C-64”

good, i could use a new C= GAMING shirt!

So you guys will all line up when he will start collecting money for the deal?

I think this was already done. Watch his YouTube channel.

groepaz: apparently that will not be possible legally, except if you invest 25k$ or more.

I know little about the deal so correct me if I'm wrong, but crowdfunding ownership of a private company sounds sketchy to me. It's like if I ask my friends to collect money so I can buy myself a bicycle.

You should stop jumping to conclusions and accepting your speculations as reality. There is no crowdfunding, and there legally can't be. Just watch Perifractic's videos and everything will be clear.

I know little about the deal so correct me if I'm wrong.

Thank you :)

Right now, many prominent members of the old Commodore / Amiga community, including former C= engineers, game developers, etc. are happily celebrating. The demoscene has every reason to join. The new Commodore's goal is to bring together everybody keeping the old computers alive, in any way.

We may see, for example, small time hardware manufacturers officially using the C= logo. This may only seem a gimmick at first read, but it really isn't. It means the products would receive strong backing and get integrated into a product line worldwide. Developers may also contribute to Commodore-curated projects, and even get their resources together to produce things. This may help a lot with the accessibility and affordability of modern retro equipment. You can think of this as an effort to make Commodore "open source", but with the realistic possibility of maintaining it as a product family.

Then of course, there is Commodore's renewed interest in endorsing and supporting any and all events linked to Commodore. Like demoscene parties. Wouldn't that be cool? On the other hand, who could be a greater authority on C= coding than the demoscene? (OK, there's also the retro game developer community... but they have a stupidly long name.)

The real bottom line is that finally the brand is in the community's hands, and not in some greedy businessmen who don't give a flying fuck to cultural and historical significance. It's not going to be abused to sell subpar products under the guise of nostalgia, and it also won't just disappear from existence because nobody cares.

This.

They should declare that all Commodore intellectual property, trademarks, inventions, hardware and software are now in the public domain.

In that moment China would begin to slap a C= logo on every sack of rice.

That hardly matters, as clearly manufacturers in China care little about infringement of Western copyrights already. The point of this would be to allow C64, Amiga, etc. to be easily available for developing and using hardware (such as FPGA-based clones and extensions) and software, and for archival purposes.

TBH the trademark isn't as important as the software. It would be really nice if the C64 ROMs and Amiga Kickstarts were released under some permissive license, so that emulators could just include them with no further issue.