This article really sells short the importance of user groups and even more informal networks, as well as type-ins, in providing software, whether deliberately released by the author to the public or not. Upwards of 99% of the software on the personal computers I saw in the early 80s was non-purchased. Computers are awesomely powerful copying machines, and we took advantage of that to the fullest!
A few of the most important software packages, like Microsoft BASIC, VisiCalc, and WordStar were motivated by the opportunity for profit, and those have disproportionate visibility in the historical record because people bought advertisements for them.
Nobody bought ads for the software distributed on the monthly HUG disks, because you didn't have to be convinced to part with your money to get a copy, and the author didn't have any incentive to convince you. If you wanted any software from the "HUG Parts List" you could get it for roughly the cost of copying: https://vtda.org/pubs/REMark/1980/remark-issue12-1980.pdf#pa....
The dominance of not-for-profit software copying never ended, from my point of view. We went from in-person user-group meetups and mail-order disks to BBSes, computer clubs at schools, and colleges, and then to FidoNet, Usenet, and the internet. Shareware was a big deal starting in the mid-80s; it was sort of nominally profit-motivated, but most shareware authors never made any significant money, and kept writing shareware anyway. Exceptions like McAfee Antivirus were exceptional. See https://bbs.retropc.se/smmvirus/00index.html for some kind of idea about the environment McAfee came from in the BBS era.