After months of waiting for a decision, the ICANN board of directors has passed a new resolution that relaxes restrictions on domain registries owning registrars and registrars owning registries.
This new resolution is specific to the new TLDs, but will likely apply to existing TLDs in the future as well.
This resolution comes after much debate and with much controversy. Following 2 years of of discussions and going through some 3,000 emails back in July, there was no general consensus on the registry-registrar separation until ICANN made this final ruling on the matter.
Affilias, the .info registry, along with GoDaddy, the number one registrar, were opposed to broad cross ownership, though Affilias would approve with some limitations. Affilias, in particular, is interested in this as the current rules for TLDs would exclude the registry because several registrars own equity in the registry. The new ruling would permit Affilias to act as a registry for new TLDs.