We always knew we wanted to make our community platform open source. Making the code available for free for people to use and contribute to seemed a logical next step for a platform engrained in the gift culture. Indeed much of the growth of the best parts of the Internet has depended on the growth of the open source movement: from Wikipedia, to WordPress (which hosts 24% of all websites!) to the very beginning of the Internet itself — when Sir Tim Berners-Lee gave the language away for the world to use.
Trying to make a strong gifting culture, and technology to support it, has been a massive challenge (we didn’t call it impossible for no reason!) After four years of trial, error and learning we are finally at a stage where we feel we have a valuable, simple and stable platform to help facilitate giving in communities.
There are multiple ways you can engage with Impossible People as an open source product. You can continue to use the Impossible People apps (iOS and Android) as normal, or if you are technically skilled you can download the code and use it to build your own community network. Or you might want to make contributions. There is a long list of features we have designed that someone can build, and we are always open to new ideas of what you think may be missing.
None of what we have achieved to date would have been possible without the support and input of brilliant people and organisations from NESTA, to Pivotal Labs, to advisors like Jimmy Wales, Brian Boylan and many others. So consider this our gift to you (the world). We hope you will get involved and become part of our impossible story.
Download the code here.