No, one is forced to use IE6 by the IT department because many internal web applications developed during IE6's time targeted the browser instead of web standards.
The idea of having sites "stop working" isn't particularly helpful, because the things that would actually matter if they stopped working are the internal stuff chained to IE6.
I've heard this argument a lot, but it doesn't hold up.
These mythical IT departments could quite easily allow for a modern browser to be installed alongside IE6, so that users could continue to access legacy applications while enjoying a modern experience on the rest of the web.
Sorry, but there truly is no (good) excuse for any IT dept to restrict users to IE6.
It's a support "issue." Large IT departments will say that it requires extra support to install a second browser. Is it worth the "extra" cost in time and support?
As a developer, in some organizations, you can't install anything on your own machine. So, you can't get your software to work on Firefox, for example. All your software simply has to work on the company standard browser. The idea is that you'll deal with it later...and 8 years later...
I don't actually see this as a problem, organizations with rigid and inflexible IT "policy" will be less nimble and competitive. The best way to make the problem go away is to eat the dinosaurs lunch.
This is a huge software development issue. A disastrous money waster.
The solution I see is to start to charge more for an IE6 compatible version of any Web software (and charge for the IE6 compatible version in the cases when the software is normaly free).
IE6-compatibility adds to the work of creating new web apps, so the client's bill ends up naturally being higher if they want IE6 support. With IE6 still having almost 20% of the market, it sometimes makes business sense to continue to support IE6.
Not sure if you have spent much time inside an enterprise. It doesn't matter if there is no excuse, they won't do it, and calling them mythical isn't going to help convince them.
The reason I say mythical is that I have never heard these arguments from someone who actually works for one of these enterprises.
(This is not surprising to me, because I know that if I worked for a company that only allowed IE6, the last thing I would want would be for developers to perpetuate my misery by continuing to support it.)
If someone can actually tell me the name of a major corporation that only allows IE6 to be installed on its workstations, I'd be genuinely interested in hearing it.
I worked there for 4 years. As a developer, I was able to install other browsers (that was against the company IT policy, but I didn't care). When I was working on the business side, though, I didn't have admin access to my machine, and so I had to use IE6, like everyone else.
All the internal apps were built to work on IE6, too. And there are a lot of internal apps. Half of them wouldn't display properly on Firefox when I tried opening them there (this was a few years ago, I didn't try Chrome or Safari).
Sorry, but there truly is no (good) excuse for any IT dept to restrict users to IE6.
You can't install IE7 or 8 alongside 6 and no other "modern browser" has any kind of reasonable group policy management support or administrative control over updating or extension policies.
I can see terminal services running published IE6 for legacy apps with desktops having IE8 on them and doing that as a workaround to have side by side, but where would virtualisation help?
We're now promptly causing the same thing to happen in a few years time by developing internal applications targeted at IE 8 and SilverLight instead of web standards :^)
No, one is forced to use IE6 by the IT department because many internal web applications developed during IE6's time targeted the browser instead of web standards.
I'd buy that if there were plenty of enterprises running Internet Explorer 4 or Windows 3.1 for exactly the same reason.
IE6 is probably backward compatible with IE4, and most 16-bit Windows 3.1 apps will run on 32-bit Windows XP or Windows 7 (you can find screenshots of Windows 1.0 programs running on Vista). I suspect IE6 introduced a lot of non-standard features like non-standard Javascript functions, more VBscript, more ActiveX, etc.
The idea of having sites "stop working" isn't particularly helpful, because the things that would actually matter if they stopped working are the internal stuff chained to IE6.