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).
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"?
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.
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 ....
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 ...
JOE