[pjc50]

Quite a lot of it was, as always, pirated.

There obviously was a mainstream tech industry that charged for its products. Often these were unaffordable to amateurs. But, since SaaS was infeasible, the software had to be shipped on physical media and run on isolated computers, which meant that it could be pirated. That got a lot of people into the industry.

There was also the hybrid model of "shareware", where you were encouraged to make copies and give to your friends - but if you liked it you were asked to mail some money to the author. Possibly the last great shareware product was the original DOOM - the demo version fit on four floppy disks, and you could mail off for the release version with more levels/weapons.