Also, many of the best Rust ideas have been backported to it.
I wonder if it’ll still be in second place after whatever new hotness replaces Rust in a decade.
However, I can't see Ada thriving without fixing their licensing. But on the other hand I don't know how well the Ada vendors could survive without charging for their compilers/toolchains.
It was developed on the same building as UNIX (so to speak), as C pre-processor with no additional requirements on C's toolchain.
That made it quickly available across all UNIX platforms and respective toolchains.
Then it followed C as younger brother alternative in any C toolchain that mattered.
A few UNIX vendors, e.g. Sun, did offer Ada compilers, but it was naturally an additional software package to buy, and not everything was available, thus additional hurdles to write FFI bindings.
Not bundling a language with a platform is always an issue with system programming languages.
The question is not "will some new hotness come along to usurp the old hotness," the question is "will the new hotness make software any better." Unless the answer to this question is a resounding "no" (even "probably not" is acceptable), maybe people should try. Please stop complaining that people want to find ways to pioneer in their fields rather than just retreading old ground.