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Are you unaware of the FSF version of GNAT that is part of GCC that is free to use, even for developing proprietary software?



I'm aware of it, and I'm not aware of anyone using it for proprietary software in the kinds of projects where Ada would come up in discussion. FSF GNAT + Alire are fine as a hobbyist toy and for open source, but they're not in contention for [workjob]. FSF GNAT isn't just unsupported, but also very thinly documented. And that's if you're only targeting Linux or Windows on x86, and not embedded devices with a cross-compiler you need to build yourself.

The basic Windows / Linux versions of the cheapest commercial Ada package only recently dropped to high 4-figures / seat. The equivalent cross-compilers are still $$,$$$.




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