I too used the "disks by post" service (in the UK) that the article describes, I've mentioned it before on HN too, but my investigation hasn't turned up the nam

I too used the "disks by post" service (in the UK) that the article describes, I've mentioned it before on HN too, but my investigation hasn't turned up the name of the company/catalog either, but I am fairly sure that it was a franchise operation based on the work of the ASP - "Association of Shareware Professionals" which was a US based organisation formed by a collection of shareware authors in 1987, and produced such a mail order catalog of software that you could order bulk shareware from.