Slight misconception. You don't need a release for some narrow commercial purposes, like artwork, academic study, or selling to news/wire services. But if you want to use it for stock photography, marketing (i.e. local businesses, tourism boards), entertainment production, or to produce a likeness or design which you intend to own separately, then you would need a release.
Good test here is if you could reasonably make a civil claim against the person reusing/redistributing the cropped images of themselves for their own purposes after the fact without permission.
The problem is that "commercial" is an ambiguous/misleading term in this context. (Cue the long-standing discussion over non-commercial in the context of Creative Commons that was never resolved.)
As you say it means certain types of uses but does not mean simply that I'm making money off it. I can absolutely take your picture in a public place and , in general, sell it to any newspaper or sell a poster made from it if I want.
Again not true at all. If I take a picture of Times Square with 1000 people in it, I don’t need permission from anybody there. I can sell the photo as a stock photo or otherwise with absolutely no permission. The same principle is true for a picture of one person on your local street.
Crowd photo yes. Photo of one recognizable person? Stock sites will absolutely look for a model release so that it can be used in marketing materials, ads, etc. You can, of course, simply publish it on a blog or in a newspaper or sell it as a poster without permission.
Good test here is if you could reasonably make a civil claim against the person reusing/redistributing the cropped images of themselves for their own purposes after the fact without permission.