Both approaches have its merits. The WMF could have
copied the
toolserver recipe much more easily than gooing the route of labs. They
were brave pursuing the VM based system, and it allows solving different
problems.
But both of them have their use. It's not a case where one should "win"
the other, or the toolserver is "bad" because it is currently hosted by
WMDE instead of WMF.
Organizations trying to defeat one another will end up with one big
loser: the community.
+1. If people *really* love the Toolserver way of doing things, they
are more than welcome to re-create the environment as a Labs project.
- Ryan