Kaloian Doganov kaloian@doganov.org
The Debian Project does not sell proprietary software.
In the same sense Microsoft is not Internet Explorer's vendor, Sun Microsystems is not Java (TM)'s vendor, Oracle is not Oracle Database Client's vendor, and Adobe is not Acrobat Reader (TM)'s vendor, because these programs are not sold (e.g. distributed at no cost), therefore, they have no vendors. In this sense, Debian Project is not a proprietary software vendor, yes.
In a wider sense: the Debian Project does not hold copyright of any proprietary software, unlike Microsoft, Sun, Oracle and Adobe. Maybe you meant manufacturer or producer, but the Debian Project doesn't do that either.
The Debian Project is even less of a proprietary software vendor than Linux Magazine, who published Georg's Brave GNU World in a friendly way IIRC, so some FSFers must have thought them worthy of assistance. So helping Debian should not be a problem.
Hope that explains,