Greetings,

By way of additional background, the change in wording of Section 10.4(a) of the Bylaws, discussed in my correspondence to the Council dated 13 January 2019, did indeed occur in the transition from the Bylaws dated 11 February 2016 (the last Bylaws in force prior to the IANA Transition on 1 October 2016) and the first post-IANA transition Bylaws , dated 1 October 2016.

Specifically, the relevant section of the 11 February 2016 Bylaws reads as follows:

Article IX, Section 4. MEMBERSHIP

1. The ccNSO shall have a membership consisting of ccTLD managers. Any ccTLD manager that meets the membership qualifications stated in paragraph 2 of this Section shall be entitled to be members of the ccNSO. For purposes of this Article, a ccTLD manager is the organization or entity responsible for managing an ISO 3166 country-code top-level domain and referred to in the IANA database under the current heading of "Sponsoring Organization", or under any later variant, for that country-code top-level domain.

The section in bold above was omitted from the relevant section of the 1 October 2016 Bylaws (Section 10.4(a)). I have been asked if I thought that the change from Article IX, Section 4(1) to Article 10.4(a) was a result of an editing (“cut and paste”) error, or an intentional result.  I have no reason to believe at this time that the omission of the last clause present in Article IX, Section 4(1) of the 11 February 2016 Bylaws from Section 10.4(a) of the 1 October 2016 (and later) Bylaws was intentional.

Best Regards,

/Stephen