StarForce was the main reason I've shunned the Gothic series, the gog version as part of its 100% DRM free guarantee has removed it from this release, right?

What? Never heard about that in Gothic 1 or 2 StarForce was used. Also GOG is DRM free, so Gothic should be too.

I bought it, played it last night, and it's DRM free.

I own both Gothic games on the original CD's. They're totally DRM free, you don't even need the CD in the drive.
Great games, the quirky control system takes some getting used to, but they're brilliant when you do.

That must be a non-German version. I don't recall the G1 copy protecion, but G2 sure was a nasty beast in Germany. The protection check was actually also done at the end of the install. When that failed (and believe me, thousands of users experienced that), the install would roll back. There was even an official workaround posted. Overall, it was a major PITA ...

Gothic 1 (German version) had no copy protection scheme.
G2&Addon (all original versions) was sadly unnecessarily protected...with problems (half the time my legal german version was rejected at game launch) until a patch removed it.
G3 too... until an 'official' community patch removed it.

Everything on GOG is DRM-free. If you wanted to you could pass out copies of this game to your friends. You'd be a huge asshole if you did that, but you could do it.