Novell coupons and McDonald's gift certificates

[Jack]

--- "Monty J. Harder" <mjharder at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/2/07, Jack <quiet_celt at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > This is equivalent to me buying gift
> > certificates from McDonald's and then distributing
> > them to hundreds. This in effect makes me a
> conveyor
> > of McDonald's meals.
> 
> 
> I do not get this.  When you give/resell a
> McDonald's gift certificate, you
> aren't "conveying" the meal in any sense at all. 
> The food is at the
> restaurant.  The person who has the certificate
> takes it to McDonald's and
> uses it in lieu of cash to order whatever they want.
It is of course a conveyance of a McDonald's meal.
It's has no value other than in exchange for a
McDonald's meal. You can't take a McDonald's meal to
Texaco and buy gas with it. You can't buy anything at
WalMart with it. You can't cash it a a bank. It's only
goo for McDonald's meals.

> 
> From an accounting standpoint, the gift certificate
> "sale" isn't really a
> sale at all.  It's just an exchange:  They debit
Every sale is "just an exchange".

> cash and credit a
> prepayment account, representing a liability to
> balance the asset. Then when
Let's not get into accounting. I'm well aware of how
things are accounted for. Accounting has no basis in
reality. Let's not stray into that land.

> And I don't see the Novell coupons as substantially
> different.  They took
Well then you do get it.

> This is a no-win situation for
> FOSS, because even
> trying to make the argument feeds into the "GPL is
> VIRAL
Time will tell. I'm trying to keep an open mind.