Recently, while having a discussion with a friend on how to handle a
major technical issue in their college, I mentioned some collaboration
opportunities that would have come up if they had chosen to use free
software in the first place. When he said that “no one in the college
will listen”, that got me thinking.

Do we only talk about something we consider useful if we feel that
someone is listening to us? What do we loose by talking even when no one
is listening to us? What if they started listening and we were not there
to talk? Then that is our loss as well as theirs’!

Since we can’t know when (or whether) they are listening to us, one
thing we can do is to keep talking!

Hence, if we want to talk about free software, it shouldn’t matter to us
if those we are talking to don’t listen to us. I am confident that, over
different points of time, different people will listen. If we can
motivate ourselves to keep talking plainly, it will matter.

The next question is – how do we talk in an efficient manner? I believe
recording thoughts in a publishable form is a good way to refer to them
or share them later on. If we can write about whatever we want to talk
about, it becomes “reproducible”. And the next time, we can re-use it to
make a similar point.

So to summarize – (at least) in the context of free software, don’t stop
talking just because you feel that no one is listening. They will listen
sooner or later.