[082349872349872]

Proposal: Being a "maker" starts when one's addition —the stone one brings to the soup— is both novel and useful.

(the systems integrator may be doing something useful —certainly something lucrative!— while hardly novel; the shade-tree github'er probably has a directory full of explorations that are novel but not —at least not yet?— useful...)

[PeterisP]

IDK, I definitely don't consider novelty a requirement. Someone who makes a chair or a machine like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgTnfTqycV0 is clearly a maker even if they're just making what many others have already made before; arguably the embodiment of the maker spirit is making something yourself even if someone else's solution is both available and more useful.