Funny this, +/- 6 years ago when I last worked with Doctrine I had the same feeling about Doctrine itself. I thought it was a poor replacement compared to Hibernate / JPA.

I'm getting old ;)

Obviously things will have matured since then.

Doctrine implements the Unit of Work pattern. From what you're saying GORM is more like an Active Record ORM.

You're right, that wouldn't make it a good direct alternative.