My 5c: Debian is a free base distro. For users who want an all-batteries-included image including non-free firmware, there are derivatives like Mint and Ubuntu. If someone wants to step up and maintain [Debian+non-free-firmware] releases, this will probably be greatly appreciated but it should not come at the expense of maintaining the rest of Debian and stretching their already thin resources.
One thing that could start paving a path forward would be to make contributing to Debian more approachable... Not saying they should get on GH/GL or anything, but there's huge room for improvement in their existing tools and docs.
Debian already maintains these images and has non-free firmware packages. They're just not enabled on the main installation disc by default. You can get non-free Debian images, they're just harder to get to.
One thing that could start paving a path forward would be to make contributing to Debian more approachable... Not saying they should get on GH/GL or anything, but there's huge room for improvement in their existing tools and docs.