Serena Software continues to turn traditional software development on its head by being the first company to license software applications under Creative Commons licenses, using one of a range of copyright licenses designed to protect creative work and encourage certain uses of that work. By licensing its free, pre-built Business Mashups through Creative Commons, and encouraging other software companies to do the same, Serena aims to build an online ecosystem that fosters the creation and sharing of new approaches to solving common business problems.

Business Mashups are graphical representations of simple business processes, such as vacation requests, sales discount approvals, and IT change requests. With Serena® Mashup Composer^TM, a free point-and-click visual design tool, users can quickly connect applications and automate business processes - without writing any code. The resulting Mashup, which looks like a Microsoft Office Visio diagram, graphically depicts new ways to solve simple yet time-consuming business processes.

To date, Creative Commons licensing has been used primarily with traditional forms of content such as art, literature, music, and movies. With today's announcement, Serena is making it clear that Business Mashups are not based on source code - rather, they are unique graphical expressions of a process. As such, Mashups are perfectly suited to Creative Commons licensing - especially in situations where users combine Mashups to create entirely new derivative works. That's where Creative Commons excels. It presents open licensing possibilities so users can copy, adapt and distribute their work. For the first time, Serena is applying this model to business process diagrams or graphical representations. The company expects the trend will explode as the public realizes the benefits and opportunities associated with the reuse and modification of pre-built Business Mashups.

To accelerate the creation and use of Business Mashups, Serena will also provide an online marketplace, where "mashers" can find, buy and sell pre-built Mashups, Web services, and professional services designed to solve business problems common to businesses of any size. Serena® Mashup Exchange^TM will spur a change in the way that partners and end-users collaborate to confront the "long tail" of IT applications-projects that individually are too small to warrant dedicated IT support yet, when taken collectively, represent tremendous opportunity.

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