Would you prefer that someone who bought a shrink-wrapped copy of Windows XP at Best Buy 6 years ago suddenly discovers that their computer/browser stopped working as it should
Yes. Happens all the time. My Toshiba Techra A6 made in '06 will not have win7 drivers released for it - therefore no win7 for me. Life goes on.
This is especially true given that browser upgrades are free
Also - is there a good reason for why ie6 cannot be simply sandboxed into a ie9 tab? This would solve all of the 'corporation are unwilling to upgrade' arguments.
Or maybe a 'portable' version with all the dependencies bundled into one distro so that ie6 could be launched without installation?