from Hacker News

Gail Wellington, former Commodore executive, has died

by erickhill on 5/17/25, 9:27 PM with 50 comments

  • by tomhow on 5/20/25, 8:14 PM

  • by asdefghyk on 5/17/25, 10:24 PM

    I read the linked page and googled here name. I found a very detailed and intesting page ( to me ) at

    Commodore International Historical Society Link below )

    Gail Wellington: far more than just a herder of CATS and ... https://commodore.international/2021/11/21/gail-wellington-f...

    Looks to be an excellent page, excellent information about Commodore computer history too.

  • by api on 5/20/25, 10:41 PM

    Had a number of things gone differently Commodore might have been Apple. Both the C64 and the Amiga were way ahead of their time both in terms of raw performance and, for the C64, price/performance at least when it first came out. I learned to program on a C64 and still fondly remember it as an amazing gateway machine into computing. Was great for games too, better than most consoles of the day.

    Unfortunately the 64, like all those 8-bit machines, was a technical dead end, and by the time the Amiga got momentum PC clones were eating the entire industry. PC clones killed everything but Apple, which barely clung to life through the 90s, and some Unix workstations in the high end market. It just wasn’t possible to compete with the price cuts and CPU performance gains that came with volume and scaling.

    (I remember in the early 90s a lot of doubts about whether x86 could be made as fast as Sparc or Alpha or other things, but Intel and later AMD did it… especially when it came to price/performance.)

    In retrospect Amiga might have competed there had it gone higher end and been a Unix-like OS underneath.

  • by cebert on 5/21/25, 2:19 AM

    I hadn’t heard of Gail Wellington before, but I read her more detailed bios that tomhow posted. I wish I could have met Gail, she has an incredible story. I can’t imagine how challenging it would have been for a woman to pursue engineering, take time off to form a family, and then return and rise like she did at Commodore. It’s evident that she possessed a lot of grit.

  • by gdubs on 5/21/25, 1:38 AM

    Our first computer was a Tandy from RadioShack. When I got really into computer animation I learned about the Amiga and The Video Toaster, which included Lightwave, which generated images for some of the best 90s television science fiction shows. It also, notably, was created by Brad Carvey who's brother Dana Carvey, who wore a Video Toaster t-shirt as Garth in Wayne's World 2.

    Anyway, we finally, maybe, had enough money to buy an Amiga and drove a couple hours down to New York City to B&H Photo back when it was basically one shop, and there it was.

    But the guy's at the shop said, "you don't want to buy this - Commodore is going under."

    So, never did get to actually use the Amiga but, I felt like I did. Subscribed to the magazines and all. It really was a magical machine.

  • by sombragris on 5/21/25, 1:44 AM

    Just wanted to state that I cannot access the article; Cloudflare throws my Firefox into an endless catpcha cycle.

  • by pcherna on 5/22/25, 2:40 AM

    We said goodbye to Gail today. She was a true pioneer and a fierce fighter for her team and for doing the right thing. Those of us who worked with her were truly blessed.

  • by peterburkimsher on 5/17/25, 9:28 PM

    @dang - black bar time?