Every person here who was donating their free time to making the best version of these movies from such limited resources are the ONLY reason that Lucasfilm is officially releasing this movie.
If all that people did on this forum was bitch and complain about how they couldn't get the original versions of the movies they fell in love with on DVD and didn't do anything about it Lucasfilm wouldn't have done a god damn thing. What really made them realize how much potential money they were losing was seeing how willing people were to bring these lost versions to fruition themselves, and even crazier GIVING AWAY said product of their blood, sweat and tears. All of you who took the initiative and upon hearing Lucas say "I will never release that version of the trilogy on DVD" picked yourselves up by your bootstraps and slogged through the tedious work of making it happen showed him how seriously we wanted to see these.
I know that there's no way to qualify this statement but I think what really made Lucas realize how much we wanted this was finding out what the X0Project was accomplishing. I think at the very least (via one of his underlings) Lucas was to some degree aware of what a fine product these tenacious people were squeezing out of such a limited source. To use an analogy, we were all trapped in a pit and while the majority of us (myself included) gave up and whined about what a shitty predicament it was, a precious few of you set about figuring a way out using the best resources at your disposal. Now it seems that just when your dilligent work was about to get us out of the hole the person who put us there in the first place has let a ladder down. To anyone outside of that hole your efforts could seem futile and primitive, but to the people trapped in that hole with you you were our saviors, our heroes, our "only hope."
When I pop in this DVD I'm not going to thank George Lucas, I'm going to thank all of you for making an out-of-touch billionaire realize how wrong he had been. All of you willfully donated your talents, your energy, and especially your time into helping this community relive these cherised moments in our lives. I thank all of you from the very bottom of my heart and salute your accomplishments.