CETIC is an Applied Research centre, focused on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), created in 2001 as an initiative of the Polytechnic Faculty of Mons, the University of Namur and the Catholic University of Louvain. CETIC stands for "Centre d’Excellence en Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication".

CETIC positions itself as an R&D centre "serving the industry", being a connecting agent between academic research and enterprises, acting for technology transfer in software engineering and electronic systems. Through its research activities, CETIC strongly relies upon close collaborations with multiple university laboratories.

CETIC is also developing a methodology to evaluate software products in an objective way (use of measurements). The goal of this method is to facilitate the comparison and the exchange of software products. In order to achieve this goal, CETIC takes part in several working groups at the Belgian Standard Institute (Institut Belge de Normalisation or IBN).

Furthermore, CETIC is collaborating with several universities related to software measurement (Ecole de Technologie Supérieure in Montréal, University of Montréal, University of Gand). Thus, the interest of CETIC in QUALOSS is to develop and exploit innovative software assessment methodologies appropriate for the F/OSS.

The facilities of CETIC that will be used on the project are threefold :

• The experience in software measurement used to assess industrial software.

• The involvement of CETIC in the open source world by supporting the liberation of proprietary software.

• The use of open source components in the internal developments.