I have just noticed the Article 1.11 of this section has been altered by the removal of the FIDE Competition rules. Previously, the FIDE competition rules were mandatory for norms to be valid. When FIDE told us that

Play shall be governed by the FIDE Laws of Chess and FIDE Competition Rules, this would be meaningless if individual organizers were allowed to bypass those rules. The change is in the Arbiters' manual but with no grey box to attract the attention of the reader. This is a substantial change

Actual https://www.fide.com/fide/handbook.h...8&view=article
Previous https://www.fide.com/fide/handbook.h...4&view=article

The unless the rules of a competition specify otherwise will only cover the case of tournaments that currently do not offer half-point bye. Actually, nobody take a bye during a norm tournament because our tournaments usually have 9 rounds and taking a bye would ruin anyone chance to achieve a norm. If you add the usual FQE requirement that all byes must be requested before the beginning of the first round, the net result will be that there will be no real change locally.