I initially thought that too, but if Richard simply meant that "the Debian website or Debian shouldn't refer to the existence of the non-free component", why would he add "in a way that suggests getting non-free software from there."? Maybe it's worth asking.My understanding of RMS's position is that he would like Debian to follow something like the rule that the FSF has about not linking to any non-free software from their sites, which would mean that we couldn't even tell our users that non-free existed in standard documentation.
Personally, I think this is not a useful place for Debian to go, even if Debian itself stopped running the non-free archive. I also don't think that FSF endorsement of Debian is sufficiently useful to Debian to be worth the trouble (and I say that as an FSF member).
Same here.
I also don't think that the "free Debian" projects are a sign of the FSF wasting resources on this in any significant fashion. The last few that have shown up have sounded like projects that people have started on their own and asked for FSF blessing for. They look to me remarkably like the many vanity Linux distributions that start and fail routinely by the dozens and generally aren't worth paying much attention to.
Same here.