In mid-1999, the Institute for Data Communications Systems at the University of Siegen in Germany looked for partners to participate in a European project for implementing the upcoming XML Signature standard. We found our partners in the companies Expertnet S.A. and PROODOS S.A., both from Athens, who were willing to use our XML Signature library in a first commercial project.

The project started in January 2000 and ended up in September 2001. 50% of the costs have been funded by the European Commission in the ISIS programme. Goal was to develop a JAVA library for creating and validating XML Signatures and to make the binaries of this software freely available.

In 9/2001, the Institute for Data Communications Systems decided to make the sources freely available, too, to promote the use of digital signatures and to give XML Signature a spin. The decision was made to give the complete library (including an implementation of "Canonical XML" and "XML Signature") under the hood of the Apache Software Foundation to ensure availablility of the source and to enable other people to use it under the Apache License.