Surely, if the argument is to be as inclusive and easy as possible, British English should be used? Things may have changed, but my impression is that the majority of English-second-language (ESL) speakers learn British English, not American. So
maybe that should be the switch, if inclusivity and lowering the bar as much as possible is the ideal?
Oh surely not! Then we'll be asking what COLOUR to paint the bikeshed! Might as well make it from aluminium if we go down that path. :-)
I like the Wikipedia rule about this. Different articles are begun by speakers/writers of different regional stylistic variations. So, for example, one article is started using some Commonwealth spelling variants. Another is started using Standard American English. The Wikipedia rule is basically, "do what it started out as, don't go back and change it, but remain consistent."
If the documentation for one particular module/library/source file/etc. starts out one way, just use that regional style.
An issue is that commit messages are uneditable after merge, so something written somewhere suggesting consideration of this would be a good idea, with authors/mergers bearing this in mind, however unusual a change on this basis would be. This would be
additional burden on the core dev team, but if commitment is to be made to inclusivity, it might be what's necessary.
Let's say someone write Python comments or documentation in "William
Faulkner English" or "James Joyce English". It's gonna be very
difficult to read for people like me.
We should.... write all of our... comments... in the style of... Louis-Ferdinand Céline (just the ellipses, not the Fascism part) .
The dead increasingly dominate and strangle both the living and the
not-yet born. Vampiric capital and undead corporate persons abuse
the lives and control the thoughts of homo faber. Ideas, once born,
become abortifacients against new conceptions.