Oh wow, I just thought up three possibilities in a minute which still allow it to be kept free for individuals.
Last week I began working on a bicycle routing app for android, and there is no obvious way to have unlimited calls to OSM, even if I paid. So, what I must do is host my own instance of it. That's a lot of overhead for most use cases. This is pretty much the opposite way app development has been going, where I build off an api as a service.
If I'm using OSM wrong in this case, I'd sincerely appreciate being pointed in the right direction.
side note, I'm assuming you down-voted me, but thank you for at least saying why. other down-votes received, because i guess they are right. feels like high-school popularity contests all over again when receiving anonymous down-votes. heck, maybe it's possible to have a dissenting comment without a down-vote. HN obviously believes this mechanism is good enough for letting the best stories rise to the top. not sure why HN feels that people's comments should be down-voted but stories shouldn't...
Further there are multiple on device routing and rendering solutions available so you don't really have to use an online service if your don't want to.
The other aspect is that the OSMF itself doesn't really produce any software at all (you could argue that the website software might be different in this respect). What you think of as OSM the OSS project is really lots of companies and individuals providing SW that works with OSM, not the result of a centralized effort a la WMF, Mozilla, or whatever ...
And I did downvote you, because when I read your comment, it seemed to merely be bashing on OSM, and didn't seem to be adding much value to the conversation. Now that you've clarified, I kind of regret it.
And yes, anonymous downvotes are terrible, which is why if I downvote I usually post a comment explaining why, unless somebody else has already done it better.