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...