The IPFS project seeks to evolve the infrastructure of the Internet and the Web, with many things we've learned from successful systems, like [Git](https://git-scm.com/), [BitTorrent](http://bittorrent.org/), [Kademlia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia), [Bitcoin](https://bitcoin.org/), and many, many more. This is the sort of thing that would have come out of ARPA/DARPA, IETF, or Bell Labs in another age. IPFS is a free, open-source project with thousands of contributors.
IPFS ([the InterPlanetary File System](https://docs.ipfs.tech/concepts/what-is-ipfs/)) is a hypermedia distribution **protocol** addressed by content and identities. It enables the creation of completely distributed applications, and in doing so aims to make the web faster, safer, and more open.
IPFS is a **distributed file system** that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files. In some ways, this is similar to the original aims of the Web, but IPFS is actually more similar to a single BitTorrent swarm exchanging Git objects. You can read more about its origins in the paper [IPFS - Content Addressed, Versioned, P2P File System](https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs/blob/master/papers/ipfs-cap2pfs/ipfs-p2p-file-system.pdf?raw=true).
IPFS is becoming a **new major subsystem of the internet**. If built right, it could complement or replace HTTP. It could complement or replace even more. Let's go point-by-point into how.
- For papers that you can read to understand IPFS and its underlying technologies, check out the ["Further Reading"](https://docs.ipfs.tech/concepts/further-reading/academic-papers) section of the [IPFS Docs](https://docs.ipfs.tech).
- [IPFS Videos & Media](https://ipfs.tech/media/) for a regularly-updated list of videos and media/news coverage, including these highlights:
**IPFS is a work in progress!** It is an ambitious plan to make the internet more free, open, secure, and high-performance. It builds on the good ideas of numerous battle-tested distributed systems.
Today, there are [multiple implementations from various organizations supporting multiple languages](https://docs.ipfs.tech/basics/ipfs-implementations/).
The IPFS protocol and its implementations are still in heavy development. This means that there may be problems in our protocols, or there may be mistakes in our implementations. And — though IPFS is not production-ready yet — many people are already running nodes on their machines, so we take security vulnerabilities very seriously. If you discover a security issue, please bring it to our attention right away!
If you find a vulnerability that may affect live deployments — for example, by exposing a remote execution exploit — please send your report privately to security@ipfs.io. **Please do not file a public issue.**
The IPFS project is big — with thousands of contributors in our community — and you're invited to join! Check out the [Community section of the IPFS Docs](https://docs.ipfs.tech/community/) for all the details on how to get involved, including the official [IPFS forums](https://discuss.ipfs.tech), our [chat channels](https://docs.ipfs.tech/community/chat), [social media](https://docs.ipfs.tech/community/social-media), [meetups and ProtoSchool workshops](https://github.com/ipfs/community#events), and more.
If you're interested in how the project is organized at a higher level, visit the [IPFS Team & Project Management](https://github.com/ipfs/team-mgmt) repo.
**If you've found a bug or want to make a feature request regarding a specific component of IPFS, please open an issue in the appropriate repo so that it can be triaged and responded to as quickly as possible.**
The IPFS project is big (and expanding every day!), so we've excerpted some frequently-used links and other resources below. However, we encourage you to explore both the main [IPFS GitHub org](https://github.com/ipfs) (for core implementations and other mission-critical work) and the [IPFS Shipyard GitHub org](https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard), home to incubated projects by the IPFS community.
- [IPFS Docs: Further Reading](https://docs.ipfs.tech/concepts/further-reading/academic-papers) - Papers to read to understand IPFS and its underlying technologies.
- [fs-repo-migrations](https://github.com/ipfs/fs-repo-migrations) - These are migrations for [IPFS fs-repo](https://github.com/ipfs/specs/tree/399c907b214a24dc82ca010af6884227cb2829cf/repo/fs-repo) versions.
- [infra](https://github.com/ipfs/infra) - Tools for maintaining infrastructure for the IPFS community.
- [testground](https://github.com/ipfs/testground) - Tools for testing distributed software at scale.
- [ipfs-cluster](https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-cluster) - Provides data orchestration across a swarm of IPFS daemons by allocating, replicating, and tracking a global pinset distributed among multiple peers.
- [ipfs-shipyard](https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard) - A wide range of incubated projects by and for the IPFS community.