<div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> distributes GPL software (because I don't buy the idea that selling coupons redeemable at Novell constitutes 'distribution' any more than giving McDonald's gift certificates to my daughter would make me a restaurant).
<br></blockquote></div><br>It doesn't have to "make you a restaurant". Does it, OTOH, to use a closer analogy, make you "involved in conveying McDonald's gift certificates"?<br><br>GPLv3 has been re-written by smart guys SPECIFICALLY to try to make it so what MS is doing IS considered "conveyance" of the covered software, and therefore covered by the license.
<br><br>Don't get me wrong, I agree with you, and think that kind of "logic" is shaky AT BEST. But law does not specialize in logic. And, you and I ain't lawyers, and even if we were, it STILL wouldn't matter what we thought -- just what a judge / jury thinks if the thing ever goes to court ....
<br><br>Given the current US "IP" climate of "creating a copyrighted work gives you absolute, ultimate, and total control of how anyone and everyone anywhere talks, looks, sends, copies, or even THINKS about it" -- who knows what might happen in such a circumstance ...
<br><br><br><br><br><br><br>JOE<br><br>