than bill of rights.
The FSF isn't at all democratic, what goes into the GPL is entirely up to Stallman.

Corp USA can install two browsers. There is no excuse for surfing the web with IE6.

Vista will still be supported along with IE9. There are also plenty of Vista compatible browsers. I can see why Vista users are annoyed but I don't think it is unethical.

Most people who bought XP netbooks in 2009 don't even know what extended support is.

The could probably backport D2D but a lot of those older XP machines have lousy GPUs anyways. But you make a good point about XP being sold in 2009. I think they should have made a non-D2D version of IE9 for XP. There are a lot of users that only upgrade their browser through Windows update.

They all eventually develop a problem from an update that requires the CLI to fix. Linux is not even close to being Windows without the apps.

I agree with 6 and maybe 7 depending on the type of website but IE8 is the most common browser. Only non-commercial websites can get away with not supporting it.

It will be more than a version check, they'll make use of the .01% difference. But they could easily do a version check to rem out the Win7 features.

They're trying to encourage OS upgrades since that is where the money is. I'm not saying it is a good strategy, I can understand not wanting to support XP but with Vista they are going to piss a lot of customers off. I doubt it will be worth the negative PR.

What is stopping those clients from using Firefox or Chrome for external sites?

AD is not a valid excuse, it works just fine with Firefox and there are plenty of guides online. IE6 is still used because of laziness. Corp USA uses it because it still works.

or buy much online.

You are absolutely right that web developers need to get tough with them. Don't even give them the option of viewing a broken website, use the IE6update script or autoforward them to the IE8 homepage. Web devs need to take more responsibility.

I don't care if you bash them for that, I was just explaining in another post how D2D and DX10 could have been backported to XP. Some of us use what works and don't take sides as if the software world is some epic star wars battle.

Which hotkey selects the play button in a Flash window?

IE9 on XP wouldn't reduce IE6 usage by 1%.

Win7 and Vista have nearly identical APIs, we're talking a .01% difference. XP at least has some significant differences but DX10 still could have been backported along with D2D.