Yes, but Gnat did not have a gpl linker exception, so for the free version your compiled file would also be gpld. https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.ada/c/cPsKwgiuO-w Only when gnat fsf was released end of 2001 this was not a problem anymore, except for the confusion and perceived uncertainty (also using it on windows means mingw, not everybody likes that) For the fsf release: https://people.debian.org/~lbrenta/debian-ada-policy.html#Hi...

You can say this is still 20 years ago, but you have to count from the other side. If you have two solutions to a problem the earlier one wins more (except if the later ones is order of magnitude better on a metric that counts). Yes, rust is also late to the party, but support of Mozilla is a big advantage.