It might be an idea to lobby to get the Ada compiler and tools to be donated to an independent non profit foundation. This might help with a wider adaptation.
Companies supporting Ada can continue to do so as support and other services. In the long run this might be more viable.
Maybe even see if there is a possibility for a government grant to sweeten the deal.
Also the foundation can get aid and grants to further develop the compiler and tooling.
Just and idea.
How would this differ from the Free Software Foundation?
The GNAT compiler is already open source and is maintained by FSF with development contributions from corporations and private individuals.
I don’t know about compiler and tools, but I created ada-lang.io with the intent of passing along ownership to some sort of independent foundation or organization.
No, gnat is owned by the fsf, but is maintained by AdaCore, very rare to see anyone outside them contributing.
What is the barrier that is preventing people outside of AdaCore from contributing?
If you find a bug, and supply a fix, and catch the interest of one of the AdaCore guys, you stand a reasonable chance of getting the fix applied. But introducing a new feature … I guess AdaCore have enough problems dealing with the Ada2022 changes, and paying customer requests, that they have little headspace for outside suggestions.
I once submitted a fix, which was approved, but what eventually got applied was the same change, submitted independently by a senior AdaCore person!
Another fix was applied, but turned out to break on a platform which AdaCore supports but I have no access to (think VxWorks).
However, see GitHub - AdaCore/ada-spark-rfcs: Platform to submit RFCs for the Ada & SPARK languages.