[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...

[aidenn0]

It's been a few years since I visited Germany, but it varied quite a bit with region, level of education, and age (pretty universal among younger Gymnasiasten, very rare among older people in former East Germany, particularly more rural parts).

I have gotten reactions from "Why did you bother to learn German? Everyone here speaks English" to "Gott sei dank! Du kannst Deutsch" ("Thank god! You can speak German")