I am looking for a similar system for a project I am starting. Could someone tell me what powers this service and is it publicly available?
Bobj
Discourse is open-source and free if you host it yourself. If you want them to handle hosting and maintenance for you, they also seem to have several plans at different price points.
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If you like javascript, you could also try nodebb. I use that for tw Chinese forum.
In addition to NodeBB suggested by @linonetwo, Flarum is another good Discourse-like forum system. It is worth checking out a few of these since Discourse in particular is notoriously heavy on system resources.
A bit off the beaten track but if you want something more akin to instant messaging, Zulip is the best of all of them in terms of naturally splitting and joining conversations. I find even Discourse-esque forum software to be rigid by comparison.
We rely on Zulip heavily at a charity I work for. It’s one of the few pieces of software that I’d say delivers a specific kind of user experience for colleagues which lets you easily have semi-structured conversations, that would not be possible without it. It would be much harder to stay on track, and I can say that from direct experience as we were on Slack before Zulip and we’d never go back.