There are a lot of people in the maker community pretty upset with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) right now. There is an organization out of Oakland, Calif. called “Hacker Scouts,” (point of information: we at MAKE are friends with the folks who run it and indeed one of our employees is on their board) and they recently revealed that they’ve been in a legal tussle with the BSA for the last few months because the BSA doesn’t want them to use the term “scouts” in their name.
Great article by Ken. In the spirit of Boy Scout values (friendly, courteous..) working together and co-existence sounds likes like something the BSA would be very motivated to do. There are many organizations that call themselves some type of “scout” – (Spiral Scouts, Codes scouts, Planet Earth Scouts, Dog Scouts, etc – Google them!) it’s a generic word. There is not any confusion between the these groups or the use of the word scout with the Boy Scouts of America, a fair compromise would be for the BSA to request Hacker-Scouts.org to prominently disclaim any affiliation with the BSA organization.
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