[opan]

>Did Google have to open Chromium? No.

Google did not make Chromium from scratch, and so were obligated to use a license compatible with the previous source they used. That source can be traced back to KDE's Konqueror browser and its KHTML engine.

[jpc0]

Your argument is that Google couldn't possibly have written their own web engine and browser at a time when Firefox and IE were the alternative options?

[opan]

I'm simply saying that they didn't, and thus they did have to "open" it, or rather keep it "open".

[jpc0]

I would argue they didn't have to "open" it at all, they could have just built up from scratch.

However they chose to do it in the open, side benefit they also got to use a ton of preexisting code.

[winwang]

Thank you, this type of info is pretty much exactly what I hoped to learn :D