The tone of the original post is trollish, but it's more misinformed than anything. It doesn't draw the clear distinction between preservation projects and fan edits, which are two diametrically opposed concepts. One supports preserving the original work in the best possible manner. As technology improves, so will the quality of preservation projects. The other supports changing a given work in some manner that sets it apart from the original.

Not to sound like I'm trumping the issue, I've said many times that I feel that fan editors (myself included especially) are behaving exactly like Lucas. If anything, his tinkering has invited us to tinker ourselves. If there is no single definitive edition, and is subject to constant revision while being marketed as "The Original Trilogy," well, fan edits are completely on the table. So I've said many times before what the initial post of this thread says. It doesn't offend me to be compared to Lucas when it comes to incessant tinkering. It's how I learn, and if it makes Star Wars interesting to me after 500 viewings, then it's nice to still give a damn.

The original post also lambasts redundancy, failing to to take into account that all the various fan edits have been done by different people, usually isolated from each other. Given that fan editors don't work for a company and don't belong to a committee, the work may be both redundant and disjointed at the same time. Fan Editor A may make change x and y, while Fan Editor B may make change y and z. It's rare that editor A is colluding with editor B on any given change. (Hey Darth Editous and MBJ, if you're reading, thanks again for all the help on the crawls and fixes; you're the exception to my rule.)

Same goes for redundant bonus features. Who cares if more than one guy likes a particular piece of SW history enough to make it available? I mean, aside from The Henson Company, is anybody else's nose out of joint about having The Muppet Show episode on a couple of different discs?

And I agree, the 2007/3D version will probably be the last updates on DVD. Then there will be a whole bunch of new updates for Blu-Ray. Lucas will continue to tinker. Then so will his kids after he's gone. That's OK; it makes it easier for us to do the same.

In summation, with all of the logic of the original post debunked, if you don't have something constructive to add: HACAASASTFU.

There is one and only one part of the original post we should all take issue with:

just get a damn DVD-R of it and be done with it. No need for an official release. I doubt I would buy the original unaltered versions if they were ever released. I've already got 'em. (Well as soon as I get the ISO mixes of Empire and Jedi that is).

Jay, how does this apply to the newly clarified forum rules? Sounds like he's supporting piracy to me. I for one continue to believe that format is irrelevant, but we should all have one properly licensed source for any title in our collection.