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[Geoff Swan]

It's all about context... and I agree arguing the definition of hacker[1]
is fruitless.

In the context of hackerspaces I think it would be unfortunate if folks
decided there
was a distinction to be made between a hackerspace and a makerspace.

Our hackerspace Make, Hack, Void had some discussion around this when we
were
chosing our name and description ("A Canberra Hackerspace"). The primary
concern
was that folks would misinterpret the use of "hack". In the end we decided
that we
wanted to own the word ourselves and were quite happy to explain to anyone
who
was unsure of what we did.

In the context of hackerspaces I view 'makerspace' as being identical to
hackerspace
but using terminology that is perhaps less open to interpretation. I
sometimes interchange
the two in conversation myself.

My personal preference would be that all hackerspaces chose to describe
themselves as
such because then as a community people we could regain some control over
the popular
use of the term hacker...

Geoff

[1] My favorite definition of hacking: "The essence of hacking is finding
unintended or
overlooked uses for the laws and properties of a given situation and then
applying them
in new and inventive ways to solve a problem - whatever it may be."
(John Erickson, Hacking - The Art of Exploitation)
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