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