I think there's a little bit off in your summary of the post-demise events, but not much. After Chumby closed its doors someone (anonymous investor?) kept paying the server bills for quite a while, presumably as they attempted to find a buyer for the remains including the customer base. Meanwhile one or more former staff (Duane) kept things going on the forums and could deal with a few things on a volunteer basis as his time allowed.

Once it became clear that a purchase wasn't going to happen, Duane was able to purchase it for what I suspect was a fairly small amount of money. That's the point where the change over to "Space Clock" happened, because as it turned out there were some international addresses chewing down amazing amounts of bandwidth, etc. some of them for no clear reason.

I haven't kept track, but at one point there was a USB-bootable local version of the Chumby software available for download, though apps were problematic. I don't know if it improved beyond the level of "choose your apps by putting the files in the right place and editing GUID-like values in a config file" or not.

My wife still uses her Chumby as a clock, but I was actually thinking about stealing it from her so I can use it as a simple streaming audio alarm clock - that functionality is built right in.