Hi!
DaB is right: WMF as the database owner accepts only paid roots. As to WMDE, we are ready to pay another root who is willing to work for WMDE and able to handle the requirements of the toolserver (that you know better than I do right now). You are welcome to propose people (or yourselves) or to help specify the requirements for a job advertisement.
I see your point, DaB, the work you would put into instructing a new person. So another possibility could be to pay an external service provider to get a bunch of things done in one go to decrease the to do pile. Which is rather a short-term help and still requires some DaB. For this, I would need a list of tasks that you, DaB and Marlen, would like to delegate. Any opinions on this?
Personally, I am new to this topic. At this point, it is hard to tell how long the transition will take, but if I may roughly estimate I think the toolserver will realistically NOT leave us in 2013. Also, I do not consider this as an attempt to "increase WMDE's influence" (at least, I am not going to brainwash people ;)) but as part of our commitment to keep up support of the toolserver.
Cheers, Silke