The general public did not use any of these services. Yes, BBSes and the like were notable, but used by a tiny minority. Most computer users bought boxed software, and that was it.
Was anyone actually selling software over the internet in the 80's/early 90's at scale? I was under the impression that the answer is "no", but if there is a counterexample I'd love to see it.
That's true. A lot of people got the shareware versions online (whether by FTP or more likely from a BBS) and decided to buy them after trying, so in that sense it's selling software online, but I get what you're saying, it's still physical media.
Forgive me if I'm pointing out something obvious about shareware, but often no further digital download was needed because the shareware or nagware download already contained the complete software package. (does not apply when you're distributing one level of a ten level video game) A user could complete the purchase of the full software and receive a key to unlock it via phone, snail mail, or email, with no transfer of physical media.
And lest we forget, a lot of shareware was based on nothing more than an appeal in a readme.txt and the hope that users would send money if they felt the software was useful - nothing more formal than that.
> The general public did not use any of these services.
The users of Prodigy and CompuServe were very much part of the "general public."
I'm sure me and all my high school friends thought of ourselves as somewhat elite for dialing into BBSes, but that's just because we were jerks. It's not like we were a secret society or something, and there were plenty of us. (You might think of computer users as an elite of that era, since they were middle class tools and not for everybody, but users of online services or BBSes were not an elite subset of that group at all. Maybe that's the big lesson here.)
> Most computer users bought boxed software, and that was it.
You've obviously unfamiliar with shareware. Adorable. (the wiki page on Shareware is inadequate enough that I guess I shouldn't wonder too much about it)
It's too bad, though, because the very lightweight and high quality software that people used to make for each other and sell or give away serves as a counterexample to a number of the assertions about the web and software you made in the grandparent post. A bigger topic, honestly...
> Was anyone actually selling software over the internet in the 80's/early 90's at scale?
Okay, first of all, you need to abandon the idea that "the internet" was the entirety of digital software distribution in the late eighties or early nineties, since you're talking about the last few years when really interesting networked systems might not rely much, or at all, on TCP/IP. I wouldn't blame you for not including that era's CompuServe users as part of "the internet," since their connection to the internet involved nothing more than exchanging email with internet users at that time (I'm not even sure when they got that ability). Although they were definitely part of the "general public." Anyway.
> Was anyone actually selling software over the internet in the 80's/early 90's at scale?
The video game companies and individual developers of games or utilities were probably the first to do it at scale. Doom, in 1993, was probably the biggest example of the era but it was relying on a well established method of distribution.
Doom fulfills the "scale" part of your question but it's a little deceptive - most software isn't like that. The great thing about early digital software distribution was that tools and games that weren't necessarily big enough to justify creating a company had a path to get into consumer's hands. Doom would have got out there regardless, but a tool like, just as one example you might have heard of, pkzip, really was a product of that environment. It eventually was shrink wrapped, but only after it'd established itself a decade prior.
Was anyone actually selling software over the internet in the 80's/early 90's at scale? I was under the impression that the answer is "no", but if there is a counterexample I'd love to see it.