Cinc

Cinc is not Chef

A community-built, free-as-in-freedom distribution of Chef's open source projects.
Same code, same compatibility, no EULA — released under Apache 2.0.

Get Started Download
Cinc Server is becoming an independent fork read the announcement →

Trusted infrastructure & community

OSUOSL OSUOSL GitLab Chef Community Apache 2.0

The Cinc family

Four projects. One toolchain.

Drop-in replacements for Chef's open source projects, built and shipped by the community.

Cinc Client

A free distribution of Chef Infra. Fully compatible cookbooks, drop-in replacement for chef-client.

Cinc Workstation

Chef Workstation, maintained as a Cinc fork. Includes cinc, cinc-shell, cinc-cli and the rest of the toolchain.

Cinc Auditor

Chef InSpec for compliance and audit workflows. Profiles are 100% compatible.

Cinc Server

The Chef Infra Server, redistributed. Now forking to outlast the upstream EOL in late 2026.

Quick start

Install in one line

Cinc uses the same omnitruck-style installers as upstream Chef:

curl -L https://omnitruck.cinc.sh/install.sh | sudo bash -s -- -v 19
. { iwr -useb https://omnitruck.cinc.sh/install.ps1 } | iex; install -version 19

See the Getting Started guide for per-project instructions, gem installs, and package-manager options.

Why Cinc?

Free as in freedom

  • Apache 2.0, no EULA. No trademark restrictions on the binaries we ship.
  • Drop-in compatible. Cinc Client and Cinc Auditor are branding-only rebuilds of upstream Chef sources. Cinc Workstation and Cinc Server are maintained as forks. Either way, your cookbooks, profiles, and pipelines work as-is.
  • Community owned. Built by users for users, in close coordination with Progress (formerly Chef Software) to stay compliant with the Chef trademark policy.
  • Sustainable hosting. CI and downloads run on OSU Open Source Lab infrastructure.

Come say hi

Talk to the community

Chat with us in the Chef Community Slack — channel #community-distros. File issues and MRs on GitLab.