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does Ada have a big enough user base for there to be people around to do kernel work?

People seem to love Rust. I've never seen that kind of enthusiasm for Ada.

I know. That is one of the major issues: lack of hype. Most Rust enthusiasts have not even heard of the language, or they did and they have misconceptions about it. If they truly care about safety, they should definitely check Ada/SPARK out.

What advantages does Ada have over Rust (in terms of memory safety)?

Ada/SPARK allows formal verification of many more properties than just memory safety. Ada on its own does not have the same kind of memory safety guarantees as rust though.

(I have no horse in this race, just curious.)

Are there any non-proprietary implementations of Ada/SPARK which don't place limitations on the compiler output?

Apparently [0][1] the FSF distribution of GNAT permits development of non-GPL software.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24492653

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/ada/comments/3989f4/gnat_gpl_restri...

I was asking the opposite question, I think. I know of GNAT, but I was asking whether there's any Ada/Spark that has a GPL (or whatever non-proprietary) license.

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