Back in March 2025, when I ran our first Bitol adoption survey, nine organizations had raised their hands. Nine. I remember thinking that was a not-that-great number, but definitely something to build on.

Key figures of the May 2026 adoption findings

Today that number is 114

That is not a typo. In fourteen months, as of May 31st, 2026, Bitol adoption went from 9 organizations to 114, nearly a 13-fold jump, spread across 21 countries, three regions, and 15 sectors. The people within reach of these standards grew from 1.1 million to 4.5 million. The map lit up: EMEA leading with 75 organizations, the United States close behind, and a striking density in the Nordics and Benelux, where Norway alone shows roughly 1.5 organizations per million inhabitants.

Here is what I want you to feel as you read this: you are early. Early enough that adopting an open data standard still makes you a pioneer, not a follower. The frontier is open, and the people planting flags now are the ones the rest will follow.

A quick word on where this came from

The origin story is almost humble. It began as a data contract template we built at PayPal to make Data Mesh actually work. In May 2023, we opened it up on GitHub under an Apache license, not knowing whether anyone would care. People cared. Within weeks it had a new name, the Open Data Contract Standard, and by the end of that year the AIDA User Group and the Linux Foundation AI & Data had joined forces to create Bitol, named after a Mayan god of creation and iteration. A template became a standard. A standard became a movement.

The trust that made it real

If I am honest, the numbers are not what moves me most. The part that moves me is the trust.

When Bitol was nothing more than a charter and a good idea, the original Technical Steering Committee bet on it anyway. A deliberately diverse group of vendors, consultants, and practitioners from around the world chose to spend their evenings and weekends on a standard with no guarantee it would matter. They disagreed in public, argued about schemas, and shipped anyway. That trust, given before any of this was obvious, is the reason there is anything to celebrate today.

What the numbers are actually saying

Look closely, and the growth tells a story about momentum, not a plateau.

By count, this is a technology crowd. 50 of the 114 organizations are in software, IT, and information services; they are building services and tools around Bitol. But in terms of reach, the weight is with retail, industrial, and logistics giants, some of which employ hundreds of thousands of people. The giants moved first, and the builders are right behind them. That is exactly the shape you want to see early in an adoption curve.

And it is accelerating. ODCS reached version 3.0 in 2024 and 3.1 in 2025. Its sibling, the Open Data Product Standard (ODPS), hit its 1.0 milestone in 2025. More than a thousand GitHub stars now sit across the two repositories, a signal of developer mindshare that keeps climbing week over week.

Thank you, and come build with us

None of this belongs to any one person. So let me say it plainly.

Thank you to the Technical Steering Committee, past and present, for the trust and the tireless work. Thank you to the community, everyone who filed an issue, opened a pull request, corrected my thinking, or simply told a colleague this was worth a look. Thank you to the Linux Foundation AI & Data for giving these standards a neutral, durable home. And thank you to the Actian CTO Office for backing the belief that open standards make the whole industry stronger.

Which brings me to you.

The gold rush has not happened yet. What you are seeing is the frontier before the crowds, the moment when a small, determined group is proving that data contracts and data products do not have to be reinvented in every company, in every silo, forever. We can share the map.

If you have been watching from the sidelines, this is your invitation. Visit Bitol.io, read the standards, and adopt them. Then tell us how you use them. Share your ODCS data contracts, your wins, your workarounds, even the parts that made you argue with a schema at midnight. Every use case you post becomes a map for the next person. Bring your questions, your disagreements, your use cases. The best time to join a frontier is before everyone else realizes it is open.

It is open. Come build.

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Appendix: The Raw Numbers

Finding practitioners is hard. It is not like going to a major aircraft builder corporate website and seeing that they use ODCS in production. Numbers come from public testimonies, requests, RFPs, contributions to the codebase, and more. Help us. You can reach out and share confidentially with me.

Aggregate figures; each organization counted once. Reconciles with the workbook roll-up of 4.5 million, up from 1.1 million only 14 months ago.

At a glance

  • 114 organizations across 21 countries, 3 regions, and 15 sectors use the Bitol standards.

  • EMEA dominates: 75 of 114 organizations and roughly 60% of headcount.

  • Size ranges from one-person tools to a retailer with around half a million staff; the median is ~2,600 employees and the top 10 are ~65% of headcount.

Reach by region

By organization size

Reach by sector

Where adoption is concentrated

Per capita, adoption looks densest in the Nordics and Benelux: Norway sits around 1.5 organizations per million inhabitants, with Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands not far behind. Country attribution is best read loosely, since many of the larger names are multinationals.

How to read these numbers

Two lists, two stories. By count, this is a tech crowd: 50 of 114 are software, IT, and information services. By headcount, the weight sits with leaders in retail, industrial, and logistics giants.

The average lies. Mean headcount is ~40,000; median is 2,600, and the top 10 organizations account for ~65% of the people.

Methodology

Source. Figures come from the Bitol adoption register, an internal tracking sheet I maintain as the chair of the Bitol TSC, current as of 31 May 2026. Each organization that manifests interest in the Bitol standards (ODCS and ODPS) is counted once. Reporting is aggregate; individual organizations and their exact headcounts are kept confidential.

Why headcount. Company size is total company headcount, a consistent and publicly comparable proxy for reach, not the number of people actively working with ODCS or ODPS. Read it as potential reach. It is the framing we agreed on; it weighs larger companies more, but those are also where decisions are most strategic.

Baseline. “Date added” marks when an organization entered the register, not a precise adoption date. The March 2025 column is the first structured pass (9 organizations); the growth since is the register catching up.

What the stars mean. A GitHub star is a bookmark, not a deployment: someone flagged the ODCS or ODPS repo as worth watching. Read the combined count as developer mindshare and momentum, not proof anyone shipped to production. The stars row sums both repositories (1,038 combined as of 9 June 2026). Go star!