"I also got the impression comp.lang.ada tended to be a bit more um... conservative, if you will."

   Hehe, yes definitely. But considering the projects some of the participants worked on, i can understand why. For those projects you do need a specific mindset.

So, thanks for sharing your experience. I will try the FSF version. Maybe this is the path forward for my personal projects (which might end up commercial ;-) ).