Retail itself, yes. However, EULA that you sign on installing the software still puts the very same restrictions on you as GoG's does (no borrowing, reselling etc.) So, in the end, you do get the same product with the same rules and it's entirely up to your moral code if you abide by it. See, now that's the important bit - when there's DRM, it's not up to you, the copy protection is trying to solve those crazy hard moral questions for you.

Saying that GoG is DRM too is completely blowing the abbrevation's meaning out of proportion in such an extreme manner that you could as well separate software into two categories: With DRM and open-source. Because, you know, giving users only binaries restricts their right to freely adjust their software!

The fact that DRM doesn't have clearly defined meaning doesn't mean you can just stretch it to whatever the heck pleases you (and if you have known Gundato, you'd also know that he's very good at this,) and saying that GoG inconveniences user as much as Steam does is just ridiculous.

I'm pretty sure i can. DRM targets files legitimacy and its usage, not people, login procedures target people and grant acess, to people, to specific resources within a common pool of resources. The login isn't there to dictate how you use your files. it's there to grant you acess to your files and your files only in opposition to giving you flat out acess to every resource in the common pool. DRM, if present, comes after acess has already been granted or in some cases DRM and login are bundled togheter like it happens with steam's client for instance.

Just to clarify, I don't share Gundato's views; I wouldn't call GOG's method DRM. But we all know the definition of DRM is stretched this way and that by the anti-DRM brigade, so it's only fair to grant the same privilege to the other side of the discussion, don't you think? After all, and as with everything else, both extreme positions are somewhat ridiculous, so let them enjoy themselves.

More to the point, I think it's precisely the point about EULAs that shows that the whole "DRM-free" thing is somewhat artificial. As SimonG likes to point out, nothing has really changed except the possibility to enforce what previously no one could. And it was only after this enforcing turned rather extreme in some cases that the DRM-free movement was born. Which is where the idea of Gundato's about both vendors using the least noticeable form of DRM they can afford comes from.

Yeah, using vague definitions of core concepts such as "access", you can create loopholes in pretty much anything you want. And quite frankly, that's not a discussion I'm at all interested in.

I'll rephrase. A brick and mortar shop doesn't give a toss who I am, as long as I give them the money. A digital shop needs to know who I am, to make sure it was really me who gave them the money. That requires authentication, and is, in its broadest sense, management of my digital rights. Therefore, retail and digital are substantially different, which was what I was arguing.

The digital shop is authenticating your payment, as you say.

EDIT: Sorry, I accused the wrong person of being pigheaded:)