Shareware certainly did work for some, pre-WWW. Distribution was not a solved problem back then, and required significant capital. Shareware use a viral engine

Shareware certainly did work for some, pre-WWW. Distribution was not a solved problem back then, and required significant capital. Shareware use a viral engine of growth (though this did mean that there were far more products for which shareware didn't work versus the handle for which it did).