Gplv2 violations are widespread, we need much much more enforcement and more copyleft software, and this could be a huge win. Free software's main purpose should not be to be proprietarized, too much of it now is a group effort among companies to more efficiently lure users to trade their freedom for functionality.
> It's also unclear to me what the distinction is between this part of the criteria and the RYF certification.
Ya, you are confused.
The PureOS endorsement is about a distro you can download and put on a computer (the distro doesn't include a bios or related firmware).
RYF is about all the software that comes on a computer/device, and the website you use to buy it, it's much more expansive.
So, Purism's computers are not RYF certified, but they come with a distro that is fully free (the disto does not include some nonfree firmware that comes on Purism's computers).
And Microsoft said all GPL was a cancer and unamerican and viral and disallowed it from about 50k engineer's computers due to "legal risk of GPL virality", and this was when they were by far the biggest software company. Wait, they lied? It was all FUD and really about threatening their business model. They changed their policies and actually said publicly they were wrong. Is it so hard to believe?
The "scripts to control" clause as you say is in all versions of the GPL, exactly the same in GPLv3, and slightly different I presume in GPLv2. It has been tested in court, and its been found to not be expansive like the fud you are spreading.