Dear Mr. Brannon, On behalf of the Protocol Council: The Protocol Council had a pleasure to analyze the issue of the ISO application for the SDO membership in PSO. Various Members of PSO are having difficulties with the interpretation of the requirement on the openness for a "...process is open to a person or organization, of any nationality on equitable terms. " (Section 8 a) (ii), MoU), which says: "Open, international, voluntary standards organizations are defined as international organizations that plan, develop or establish voluntary standards. An organization shall be considered open and international if its standards and /or specifications development process is open to any person or organization of any nationality on equitable terms. An organization shall be considered voluntary if it makes no claim to compel use of its standards and specifications. Additionally, to be considered "international", an organization's voting (or other "full") membership must include individuals or companies primarily located in at least three different Geographic Regions and at least two different countries within each of those Geographic Regions" As the PSO-PC is a consensus based body, Protocol Council decided to ask ISO Secretariat to describe the method by which a person or an organization can participate in the work of the ISO in order to demonstrate whether it is internationally open or not. Also, Reform Committee is going to publish a new paper for the discussion very soon and a number of issues regarding the PSO Reform might be raised in this paper. This paper will be discussed at the Bucharest ICANN Meeting. After receiving the requested information from ISO Secretariat, Protocol Council will give a final response to the ISO's application by the end of July 2002, after the ICANN Meeting in Bucharest. Sincerely yours, Vladimir Androuchko PSO-PC Secretary