While I don’t have the time to write some more thorough reviews, let me just get some of the current stuff I’ve read out of the way:

Eragon

I’ve just finished reading the first book of the series, got the next one already downloaded on Kindle. I really liked the book, and I’ve high expectations for the remaining ones in the series. My only complaint is that Paolini tries too much to look like a veteran writer, and this shows in his choice of words and the construction of his phrases. This is mostly related to immaturity I believe, and much like J.K. Rowling I expect him to improve his writing skills on the next books.

One Jump Ahead: Challenging Human Supremacy in Checkers

This is an amazing account of the development of the Chinook software, a Checkers playing engine that was developed by Jonathan Schaeffer and his team. I seriously recommend this one, specially to those interested in Artificial Intelligence for Games and the level of dedication required to achieve an almost-perfect engine. Though the book discusses several technical topics, they are always properly introduced so it should be pretty easy to follow. The same goes for Checkers, which I actually found out is not as easy as I had previously thought.

Bossypants

This is Tina Fey’s autobiography. Being a huge fan of her work, I thought this would be an amazing read, but she puts so much emphasis on sarcasm that I actually stopped halfway through this one.

I really honestly thought it would be much better given the fact I love Tina's writing on 30 Rock and others, but after going over some 15 or 16 chapters I just got fed up with the huge amount of sarcasm. It does provide a few funny moments, and it might even get better towards the end if you stick with it, but I didn't.

The Steve Jobs Way

Though it describes itself as focusing on the leadership skills of Steve Jobs, this book is actually a biography/mythology in disguise.

It does provide a nice account of the history of Apple, including detailing some of the detours from Jobs at NeXT and Pixar. But it markets itself as a view into the leadership ways of Steve Jobs, and though it does mention lots of tidbits related, most of the time it just ends up as some sort of shrine for him: "only Steve Jobs could have done this", "only Steve Jobs could have thought this", etc.

I haven't read it yet, but I bet Isaacson's official biography is probably a much better read than this, both for people interested in his life and for people interested in his leadership skills.

Founders at Work

This is a collection of interviews with Startup founders. They really go into the details of their beginnings and give plenty of advice for wannabes, while keeping a extremely light mood. This is one of those books which you can always go back to, rereading one or another interview (much like its companion Coders at Work).

Can’t recommend this one enough, hopefully more people in the “Startup scene” will read and learn something from it.

I had quite a few ideas about what I would want to write first about here, but the recent passing of Steve Jobs and the subsequent torrent of articles released on it made this a no-brainer. Sadly, the one article that led me to actually sit down and write was the post published by Stallman on his “personal” blog.

I’ve been a Linux user since at least 1997 and I’ve already been a paying member of the FSF since I wanted to contribute back not only with source code (which I did, for several projects) but also financially. But I’ve since then abandoned my membership of the FSF after seeing that several of the projects on which my money was being spent were merely publicity stunts that were neither advancing the state of Free Software nor helping out overall with the community.

Now seeing Stallman’s latest post and the repercussion it had, I can’t help but feel glad to no longer be a member of the association he embodies. The FSF seriously needs to rethink itself, coming up with new answers for things such as what it stands for, what it wishes to become and the best way to get there.

The main issues which I think would need answering are:

1. What the FSF stands for? Is it here to advance the cause of the GNU project (and is this project still valid)? Or is it here to engage with developers and users in order to foster the Free Software community?
2. Is the FSF relevant nowadays? Is it helping developers achieve more or is it getting in their way?
3. How can it become more relevant in the future (both short-term and long-term)? How can the FSF advance the cause of Free Software?
4. How can the FSF be organized in order to better achieve this?

I hate to say this, but I honestly think that Stallman also has one major item that would fall under his personal agenda: is the FSF being helped by his leadership or would he better provide for the FSF by stepping down and assuming another role within the organization?

The GNU project failed on its initial goal of providing a complete and useable Free Software operating system. But it succeeded in fostering several different projects which became the base of the Linux operating system. It is high time the FSF acknowledges this and changes to focus on becoming a center to foster Free Software development, perhaps even learning a thing or two from Steve Jobs about product development in order to turn Free Software into something useful for end-users.

One thing that is sorely lacking in the Free Software world is the attention to details that has become the signature of the person whose death sparkled this whole debacle. The state of Free Software has improved absurdly over the years, but an organization such as the FSF could do wonders if it focused solely on this, given that it is not directly related with any company (such as Canonical) or toolkit (GTK+/Qt/EFL/etc.).

Of this FSF focused more on the developers and end-users, I’d be a proud member.