I'd interpret that koan to mean that those in isolated woods can make noise without being heard.
Say I have a personal project with a few dozen users. Somebody reports a bug on osx -- I don't do windows, I don't do macs, so I'd need to rely on my small community to fix it. With a pirate copy, I'd be able to do the fix -- and none would be the wiser.
Scale that up to a company, put it up on a public repo's CI, and that's when people might hear the tree fall.
Say I have a personal project with a few dozen users. Somebody reports a bug on osx -- I don't do windows, I don't do macs, so I'd need to rely on my small community to fix it. With a pirate copy, I'd be able to do the fix -- and none would be the wiser.
Scale that up to a company, put it up on a public repo's CI, and that's when people might hear the tree fall.