Thanks for writing this thread.
If I wanted DRM'd games, I'd stick with Steam.
No more purchase from this user. :(

I could, but wouldn't it be better to just include a known-working unpacker with each one? That way, you can use the installer or unpack them without keeping two copies.

Sure, long before GoG existed I used a common packer to make such self extracting archives you could also open as zips (if needed) just to have my games more easily accessible than all those CDs.
I was glad that GoG did this work for me later and now I wish I'd have kept my old files.

Please, can we stop to discuss the usage of RAR as compression format, which is totally bikeshedding?

The usage of RAR is totally minor aspect vs the issue that the archives are locked currently! Don't let us defocuss the discussion with GOG to a totally irrelevant side-aspect as multiplatform decompression support is available and even code is here, we don't really need a free software/format support. Let us focus on making the severity for us of the core aspect "locking of content" to GOG clear.

PS: also, there is an older GPL licensed unrar fork http://www.unrarlib.org/license.html

But they made their point about this. Locking the content means a bit less hassle for them. Not much we can do about it, can we?

Agree with shaddim, we can work with RAR. It's the password that's the problem.

I would not downplay the RAR issue that much. At the moment we can extract the current version of RAR archives. Being a propertary file format, we cannot assume it will always be this way. I would much prefer to rely on free formats for more futureproof archiving.

(BTW, the unrarlib library you pointed to was already a "victim" of a file format change. It only supports RAR format v2.0. Since September 2013, the latest version is v5.0.)

However, the main issue, as you say, is the use of deliberate locking. We should, indeed, focus on that. For me, this is mainly a moral subject, and I expected better from GOG.

I still trust that they will soon say something on this matter. But I already started looking for other DRM-free game stores and stopped buying games here. Just in case...

Wait a minute. I noticed that some people have been reporting that, even though the new installers spit out some errors when run with Wine, the games are properly extracted and installed anyway. This is, of course, unrelated to the current discussion about the password protection and such, but if true it would be quite an important difference to what was told earlier. Because it would mean that there is still a way to extract these installers under Linux without using customized scripts or anything like that. Not as quick and efficient as running innoextract, of course, but still better than what I thought.

...and rendering the (official) argument for the locking moot.

They never said that they wanted to prevent peoples from being able to run the installer through Wine, on the contrary GoG dev said he will look to see why the new ones had issue even thought it wasn't officially supported.

And I never said that.
He wrote, that he didn't want people tampering with the files and therefore locked them.

The next logical step would be to use a more effective locking (even more DRM) or abandon this bs altogether.

Running the installer through Wine is not "tampering". He didn't wanted peoples from adding extra files to the installer or prevent average joe from accidentally extracting them using WinRar.

*sigh*

It's not about Wine for the dev, it never was, stop it.

Then what was it ?

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/on_gnulinux_has_anyone_be_able_to_extract_the_rar_innosetup_installers?staff=yes