It has been interesting to me how important words are in these discussions. In
this case, the word "fix". We may not be able to "fix" as in "eliminate" the
requirement to communicate in English, but I believe we can and should
encourage communities to choose their words more carefully so that "fluency" is
not perceived as a requirement. I already do filter my choice of words to try
to avoid word patterns that non-US citizens may not understand since all but
one of the most active committers on my project live outside the US.
We might come up with other social suggestions like allowing posts in other
languages on users@ lists, allowing posts in other languages on dev@ but
recommending translation of the original post to English and requiring posts in
English on private@. That's sort of how Flex and Royale operate today without
any official documentation of this approach.
My observation is that restaurant workers in the US in popular tourist areas
are generally trained to be patient with non-English-speaking customers and
also choose their words carefully. Why shouldn't we all take that approach at
Apache? Another observation is that airline pilots fly to the US from all
over the world and communicate in English to flight controllers in the US (and
other countries too, iIRC). I'm fairly certain the US-based flight
controllers choose their words carefully. I do not think all of those pilots
from other countries are fluent in English. They have learned enough
functional English to communicate on how to navigate and land an airplane.
Does/should software development at the ASF require an even larger English
vocabulary than navigating air-space?
My 2 cents,
-Alex
On 5/14/19, 6:27 AM, "Bertrand Delacretaz" <bdelacre...@apache.org> wrote:
On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 3:09 PM Daniel Gruno <humbed...@apache.org> wrote:
> ...It's like democracy - while not perfect, it is (I would say) the least
> sucky way of ensuring fairness, openness and proper governance, as it is
> the most universal (and de facto standard) language we have..
+1
> I do not see the need for or lack of English skills as a thing *we* can
fix...
Same here, I was mentioning as one invariant that does affect who
joins our communities - or more precisely the way people contribute.
-Bertrand
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: diversity-unsubscr...@apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: diversity-h...@apache.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: diversity-unsubscr...@apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: diversity-h...@apache.org
