Open Source Summit Europe 2022

The open source community has developed a vocabulary and culture that can be viewed as a second language. In learning open source, there can be a steep learning curve for those who do not initially arrive at it in their education, early careers or only participate as a small percentage of their work. To speak the language, one must meet colleagues in common areas like Github, learn the terminologies and methods, practice contributing, and repeat often to become fluent. However, there are still language barriers as open source practices differ across companies, and stakeholders can drastically vary anywhere between legal, security, and technical experts that bring their own lingo. With developers being distributed globally, there are challenges but also opportunities for open source software to be written in multiple programming languages and languages other than English. This panel brings diverse perspectives and will share how they learned to speak open source, guidance on working with stakeholders, and why open source has become a primary language in their careers. They will explore the impact of language, open source culture and communication styles, and strategies for making language inclusive.