Comment by WhyNotHugo

Being closed-source isn't just an ideological issue, it bring about a lot of practical issues. E..g.: distributions aren't going to package it, so users need to download the tarball and install it manually. They'll also need to manually update it (unless they're including some dedicated service?).

Then, integration with the OS will be weird. If you're distributing binaries, you can't dynamically link system dependencies (they are either bundled or statically linked). Any distribution-specific patches and fixes will be missing. AFAIK the default path for the CA bundle varies per distribution; I'm not even sure how you'd handle that kind of thing. I'm sure there's hundreds of subtle little details like that one.

The audience ends up being Linux users, who are fine with proprietary software, have time and patience for manually configuring and maintaining a browser installation, and are also fine with an absence of proper OS integration.

I think Steam is the only popular proprietary software on Linux, and they basically ship an entire userspace runtime, and almost don't integrate with the OS at all.