On June 16th 2003, Luminas and 5 partners announced the launch of Orixo: the XML business alliance, a newly-formed venture of European companies specialising in building and supporting enterprise XML solutions around Open Source technologies.

The involvement of commercial entities in an open source project can help tremendously with its success. If we look at the Linux OS, the Apache web server or other important open source projects, we often can see a mixed model where business and open source go side by side.

In the past, the commercial side of Cocoon has been slightly "in the dark". Some community members were known to be commercial entities, but in general, their commercial side has been intentionally kept low profile. We believe that this can be especially a disadvantage when it comes to enticing new companies into the world of Cocoon - they might fear that there is no support nor additional tools which will help them to build sustainable operations based on the Cocoon project.

In addition, we are perceiving an increasing need for additional Cocoon services such as training or consulting.

Late last year the alliance members started a loose discussion on forming some sort of business alliance with the aim of being an umbrella under which commercial entities could discuss business perspectives, share resources or work together on new Cocoon related topics.

We were able to join in open discussion (although being competitors) because we felt that the business model laid out in the Cluetrain manifesto was a "Good Thing" when it comes to defining business in the Internet age. Also, as much as we care about our own businesses, we have been working inside this wonderful Cocoon community for a long time and care a great deal about its sustained development, both community- and technology-wise.

These discussions resulted in a consortium of 6 European companies, whose names are well familiar to the Cocoon community, joining forces to accelerate the corporate adoption of Cocoon by offering a shared vision of support and services.

We feel very strong about the fact that an open source-related business initiative should have a particular emphasis on giving back to the community. The members are all active members of the Cocoon project, and we hope that our joined efforts will continue to be beneficial for the entire Cocoon community. With regards to our involvement in the Cocoon project, business remains as usual.