"Now’s the time. Someone needs to start the ball rolling and just say no."
Lots of us say no to supporting IE6 whenever we can, the problem is the person paying our salaries says we will.
But regardless of that, the sad truth is that developers aren't the ones preventing a full scale cutoff of IE6, it's our users. If the people you are making things for use IE6 then you have to support them.
How much of the revenue comes from IE6 browsers? If it's more than the cost support it/ less drop it... My guess, it's less revenue then cost and that by this time next year we can say the same for IE7.
Developers need to start keeping exceedingly careful track of exactly how much time they spend fighting with IE6 so they can go to the person footing the bill and say "this is how much money you've wasted on a completely obsolete technology".
"Wasted" is totally the wrong attitude. Knowing the support cost is important, but whether it is a waste or a business investment can't be answered by engineers who are programmed to follow the latest shiny thing.
If 60% of my users are on IE6, it is in no way a "waste" for me to spend the money supporting it and calling it a waste highlights an engineers ignorance of the business side of things.
Lots of us say no to supporting IE6 whenever we can, the problem is the person paying our salaries says we will.
But regardless of that, the sad truth is that developers aren't the ones preventing a full scale cutoff of IE6, it's our users. If the people you are making things for use IE6 then you have to support them.