Comments for When Free Isn't Cheap Enough
Web developers and users of better browsers take on the costs that organizations who run older browsers don't bear (but should). Developers bear direct economic losses in the form of higher costs for the production of "lumpy" goods (based on the lowest-common-denominator effect noted) and pass those costs on to all of their clients, not just the ones using bad browsers. Obviously, I support differential pricing based on browser quality, but for many web apps that's not really workable...or at least it hasn't been historically. The costs are suffused throughout the development process: libraries are bigger and slower than they otherwise would be since they assume lowest-common-denominator. CSS techniques are stilted because of assumptions about browser support. Performance and features are capped at every turn, driving costs up for everyone.
Regards
How are older browsers any different?
Additionally, there isn't moral hazard here unless you want to make the argument that IE6 users are more likely to have a security problem, but aren't being forced to cover the full costs of that. In the existing case if users are running IE6, a developer is perfectly at rights to charge them more to use their application if they'd like to, or not service them.