I think people moan too much. This is a reasonable compromise where most sites will continue to render in standards mode (which is a good thing for web standard

I think people moan too much. This is a reasonable compromise where most sites will continue to render in standards mode (which is a good thing for web standards) while older sites largely continue to work in IE8 (which is good for browser uptake, users and developers of older sites). You can't please everybody all of the time, but this is the best solution I can think of. Is the alternative that older sites are broken out of the box with IE8 and users actively avoiding it because many sites don't magically work in IE8 somehow better? Rather than forcing every site to switch, only /a tiny minority/ of sites will be caught in the crossfire and be forced into IE7 mode incorrectly, and those who are can remedy this relatively easily whether via the HTML5 Doctype switch, a META tag, IE8 header tag or even contacting Microsoft to get it fixed. Instead of requiring /every site/ to it, we're talking about an utter minority of sites accidentally getting broken in exchange for it fixing a large proportion of problems.