Coversant on Tuesday announced open source developer kits for building XMPP-based (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) collaboration applications.Collectively known as SoapBox Studio, the free kits function with x86, x64 and IA64 platforms on the .Net Framework and Novell’s Mono platform. The kits are accessible here at the company’s new online Developer Community. “It’s time to inspire a new era of integrated XMPP messaging and collaboration development,” said Jason Frankel, CEO of Coversant, in a prepared statement released by Coversant. “Through our new developer community, Coversant will be working closely with software publishers to give their customers the ability to collaborate on content and communicate more effectively.” SoapBox Studio is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). The kits formerly were called the SoapBox Framework. Software Development