Comment by eupharis

All Germans I have ever met have had excellent English. Certainly good enough to read short English commits with only the occasional dictionary reference required.

The Eurobarometer report from 2006 says 56% of Germans speak English.

But I suspect that rather underestimates the case here. There is a huge difference between someone checking a box on a form that says they can speak English and being able to parse short messages in English.

And given only fairly educated, tech-savvy Germans are likely to participate in this, I think the negative effect from English commits is straight up zero, or at worst incredibly low.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-sp...