Comment by graemep

> The only reason a "web browser" is "free" (as in beer) is because Microsoft in the 90s was (belatedly) very worried about a world where Netscape held a lot of power, and realized making and giving away a slightly better browser would neutralize this upstart. Everything flowed from that one tactical decision by a couple of execs at MS.

There were free as in beer browsers before IE (although many were free for non-commercial use only).

Chromium is a fork (well, a fork of a fork) of a FOSS browser specifically developed to be a FOSS browser for FOSS OSes (primarily Linux).