Agreed with @paulishca but, in the spirit of your message, which is not about English @storyteller:
I think the language topic is really the topic “what is the world” and also “how do we work together” best?
And I almost did not get involved with Meteor because of Portuguese. I thought it was a bad sign that the library was going to be more arbitrary conceptually, perhaps even limited or skewed, in the way design was being thought. I have seen that many times and fight that myself since I work outside English for most concepts and then port them over to English, which is extremely difficult and often disfigures the idea.
This does not mean I am pro English, only that I understand why English is the way English is, and it is the most appropriate to Programming. A few other languages might work, but those hit social limiters, on the whole. English is a prerequisite technology of Open Source, at the very bottom. At least for the last 50 years and the next 20, if not next 100. Getting to English is a lot of the goal of the melting pot engineers also, so there is a gale force wind in that direction.
English is a foundational language with wide usage in Open Source because it coincides with Programming; it is the replacement legal language, following after Latin. It is not intended to be subtle like other languages, which is why so much effort goes into being subtle or artful, it is intended to unite speakers into one mind.
But I do not think this is necessarily the best idea, nor done well in history ( usually by direct force or by indirect force of propaganda ) … and this is coming from an individual with recent lineage in every major continental body except South America ( and Antarctica ) directly. The closest I came to South America was living in Central America, so I got only a vague feeling. But all of the Americas are one whole, which most people do not know or see still true. Working with colleagues in South America there is the feeling “oh, more Americans” and then mainly nuance differences, not existential ones as with going across an actual world boundary.
Each cultural segment has their own language regardless of what they speak. Outreach will be microcultural for it to succeed, and that is an extremely long conversation. And squads do need to come up. What I agree with from @xet7 is that this forum ( right now, does not need to remain so ) is essentially a squad-oriented, not even culturally foundational, forum. It is mostly a support forum, which not only requires high levels of English, but also high levels of Experience, within reason, and to have a ton of novice or even intermediate here would dilute that squad of higher experience. It is a club-house right now, speaking as a still kinda outsider, but seeing what is what. Looking at forums geared toward novices and intermediates it is an intellectual dumpster fire and that level of fresh hell every day I would never want in such a high-complexity ecosystem
Suffice to say, I would not split into Languages any more than we ought to cater to every single experience level, teach programming, etc. I suggested mentorship because that is the middle-way: If someone wanted to invest 3-5 years and really get deep into investment into the ecosystem of code, documentation, community support, etc… that is a special category, same with founders - we are the floor every ecosystem stands on.
I would vote no on many languages, and vote yes on many languages of documentation perhaps but not contribute toward that, because I think it is thinking about the world in a way that is not the way the world is. There is an undercurrent pushing toward one world, but we are not - nor ever wish we were - one world. We are many worlds, working together, collaborating in compensation, ideally in balance, but not as a melting pot.
That seems good to work out right away in a “foundation” context but the more I think about this, the more I think there needs to be a scaffolding organization which preserves and helps develop many related communities which themselves work together, and across modalities, not just in the same programming language, etc… something others here would still understand, something relevant… I have some examples in mind. A lot of communities less important than Meteor have a lot of the same problems. It would be more DRY to solve the root issues which cause various EOL situations for */OSS, then implement it here, as well as other neighboring communities. I am personally part of dozens of key technology communities, management cooperatives, etc… cannot ever focus on just one, and that would be better if it were not a competition for the same attention. Also without ability to go deep and concentrate, all these segments defeat each other, taking the limited resource of ego, since ego depletion is serious. Right now I think */OSS is pretty much ruined, which is good news because everyone thinks it is in its best era. Lots of room to evolve from ruined to awesome.
Understanding the way the world really is, not taking onboard the idea spread by the vaguely incumbent layers wishing uniformity of service in the lower layers, being willing to embrace the diversity in the world by not subjecting everyone to the culture they are not from, while unifying them with purposes they share which is how decentrality works… Working in other spoken languages in the past was never in competition with English, it was always studying something English is too brutal to render, such as spiritual, psychological, emotional, intellectuality itself versus intellectual pursues, physical life, and certainly gender and sexuality. English is where it is too hard to talk about those actually valuable things, so instead we get things done and go big.
