Hello,
I'm both user of the toolserver and member of the board of Wikimedia
Germany e.V. Wikimedia Germany is the provider of the server but we have
no knowledge nor time to maintain it. So first of all a big thanks to
all of you who keep the toolserver and the database running for various
tools that support the Wikimedia projects - Gregory summarized very well
the profit of it. I'm afraid Wikimedia Germany cannot easily bring
replication, OAI-access and other stuff, I also doubt that communication
via Toolserver users -> Wikimedia Germany -> Wikimedia Foundation ->
Wikimedia technical admins is easier than endurance at wikitech-l and
IRC. But the e.V. may declare "official partnerships" (this can make
differences in the real world where people try to get funding) and we
can buy hardware. I hope that self-organization still works although
it's often frustrating. Maybe we can also manage the account policy in a
self-organized way: it was planned to revise all accounts in April. I'd
like to switch off inactive accounts to limit the users to people who
are really working with the toolserver - what do you think about it?
Greetings,
Jakob