Todd Koeckeritz (Contributor of Blender Cloth) says in April 2006: 
> Provot was chosen when we started the project because I had the code written already from two years ago when I was working on cloth as a python module. So, we've started with that. However, the few semi-unique characteristics of the Provot paper referenced in the wiki page are being replaced now with a similar process from another paper. So, in some ways Provot is gone, or will be in the next release. However, the nice feature described by Provot in section 5 of his paper, deals with eliminating the super-elastic/rubbery effect that some cloth simulators exhibit. That was my reason for choosing the paper two+ years ago.

The initial checkin of Blender Cloth files for "trunk/blender/source/blender/makesdna/DNA_cloth_types.h" by Daniel Genscher (Contributor of Blender Cloth) reads in September 2007:

    +/**
    +* This struct contains all the global data required to run a simulation.
    +* At the time of this writing, this structure contains data appropriate
    +* to run a simulation as described in Deformation Constraints in a
    +* Mass-Spring Model to Describe Rigid Cloth Behavior by Xavier Provot.
    +*
    +* I've tried to keep similar, if not exact names for the variables as
    +* are presented in the paper.  Where I've changed the concept slightly,
    +* as in stepsPerFrame comapred to the time step in the paper, I've used
    +* variables with different names to minimize confusion.
    +**/

Todd Koeckeritz initially leveraged Provot's model. Daniel Genscher released the Blender Cloth Modifier in February 2008, according to BlenderNation.com.