I tried using Osmand recently and unless I got something very wrong there is no free version to speak of. You get 6 free map downloads, and those maps are tiny. And when I deleted a map it turned out that it’s literally 6 downloads. Even redownloading the same map counts towards that limit. I was expecting that deleting a map would allow me to download a different one, so that the limit would only mean that I can have 6 maps at a time and change them every now and then.

With this limit the app is only useful for people who stay in the same area all the time, and then you don’t need a navigation app.

Can you elaborate?

I doubt that this move has made them much more “safe and controllable”, it just means that they depend on a different system. I mean as soon as a bug pops up in their software the rest of the world will be fine.