Yup, long before I ever heard of Stallman we were passing around mag tapes full of software to share - people brought stuff to conferences and conference tapes were a thing
No it's not, sharing the source code of stuff you create yourself with others is not 'pirating', it basn't then and it isn't now (we're talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_track_tape here)
Creating and advocating for a legal framework elevates this to a different level. There is a difference between passing floppy discs to your buddies and software that whole industries are based on. It needs a solid legal foundation. And a philosophocal framework too, i it's supposed to survive.
You are correct if you're only talking about software created by _yourself_. However, most of the software I got on 9-track tapes were collective works, with the usual case being that the copyright owner was the employer of the people who actually wrote the software.