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Netscape lost the ability to charge before it went open source. Among other things, Microsoft released internet explorer for free (part of embrace, extend, extinguish, afaik).

The open sourcing of Netscape 5.0 happened in early 1998, and AOL purchased Netscape later that year. Firebird/Firefox came a few years later.

> You used to have to buy a physical copy in the store to install it.

That is not true. They also made it available to download over the internet free of charge (and, as others said, they licensed it to ISPs to distribute to their customers). You were expected to buy a commercial license if you used it for business, though. Practically everyone had a copy of it in 1997 and used it as their primary browser, paid or not, until Microsoft shipped Internet Explorer.

Netscape was included free with almost every ISP installation disk.