Goals

The Cinc project defines two goals for itself.

1. Easy redistribution

We’re not just building a distribution, we are making the software distributable. We do this by submitting changes directly upstream.

These changes are designed to make it simple for anyone to create their own distribution. As an example, in https://github.com/chef/chef we created a dist.rb file containing constants that map to the Chef trademarks. Distributors can now patch or replace only 3 files — dist.rb, the gemspec, and the omnibus configuration — to produce their own distributions.

See how we do our own builds here: https://gitlab.com/cinc-project/distribution/client/-/tree/stable/cinc

Branding-only rebuilds track their upstream repository on a stable/cinc branch. For projects we maintain as a true fork — currently Cinc Workstation and the upcoming Cinc Server 16.0.0 in distribution/cinc-server — development happens on main.

2. Free distributions

We aim to provide end-users with the same value and experience they’ve come to expect from these tools over the years.

Most Cinc projects are not forks — functionalities are identical, and differences are purely cosmetic, intended solely to comply with the Chef trademark policy. Cinc Workstation and Cinc Server are exceptions: both are now maintained as true forks because Progress has wound down the upstream omnibus build infrastructure for those projects — Workstation in favor of Habitat-only builds, and Server in favor of the proprietary Chef 360 platform (see the announcement).

All Cinc binaries are licensed under Apache 2.0 and are free of any further EULAs or licensing.

The Cinc team makes no guarantee of compliance with the trademark policy and is working on a best-effort basis. We receive ongoing guidance directly from Progress and the upstream Chef community, who have been very cooperative.

We currently distribute:

A free distribution of Chef Automate™ (Cinc Dashboard) remains a longer-term goal but is not actively in progress. We do not currently plan a Habitat rebuild; if there’s community interest, that can change.

3. Omnibus builds, going forward

The Cinc Project intends to continue producing omnibus binary packages (.deb, .rpm, .msi, .pkg, plain tarballs) for all Cinc projects for the foreseeable future. As upstream Chef shifts to Habitat-only builds for projects like Workstation, maintaining the omnibus toolchain ourselves — even where that requires forking — is a deliberate part of the Cinc Project’s mission.

Other ecosystem tools

The Cinc Project’s scope is limited to redistributing binaries produced by, or derived from, Chef’s open source projects. This would include a free distribution of Chef Infra Server, but not third-party tooling like test-kitchen.

We encourage anyone concerned about 3rd party tools to contact the maintainers of those projects directly. We will, however, make reasonable efforts to ensure Cinc remains compatible with them.