Netscape started out selling its browser. People bought it because it was significantly better than the free alternative at the time (Mosaic). Then Microsoft came out with Internet Explorer, which was good enough to challenge Navigator, and was distributed for free.
I am not actually suggesting that microsoft didn't beat netscape in the browser market but that the apache project is the competitor that finally killed off netscape's last supply of oxygen. Think of apache as the one to deliever the finishing blow.
What's the vote-down for, anyway?
Note, this is from heard-so. So it might be false. Nonetheless, it is an intruging idea that open source competitors are actually silent killers of proprietary software companies. Kinda make you wants to examine history to see who is really the true players and the true good guys and bad guys of civilization.