Not exactly.

Prior to the 1980s, most computing was on highly proprietary mainframes. The industry was dominated by IBM. Consumers (companies, not individuals) could not _own_ their software. It was all licensed product by IBM and the big vendors. Many vendors did not sell, but instead licensed, their machines, as well. It was very closed, and innovation cost the inventor dearly, and made the vendor a fortune.

The 1980s saw the maturation of the mid-size market, the revolution of the new PC world, an opening up of the hardware and software world, and a hugely exploding new user base. The entire paradigm for the computer market changed. Note, though, the tendency of vendors (ahem, Apple) to return to this world.

Anyone who wants the old days has not been studying history.

Thanks for contributing. One more question:

I've understood that those who bought the early mainframes still did get the sources and were allowed to modify and recompile stuff — possibly at their own risk but anyway. That I believe is what FSF wanted back when software started coming up in closed form. Was it like that?

That's about half of it. You bought a computer and generally got the source to the software, such as it was, that ran on it. But the main reason you had the source to the software you were running was because you wrote the software you were running. The market for 3rd party software came later, but also at the same time as people were already mailing tapes around and posting stuff on usenet. There's no reason to believe people would have suddenly stopped mailing tapes around if the FSF didn't show up.