It's not question of contribution - it's question of unification...

#1 does make a difference to you, because Free Software generally tends to be of better quality than proprietary software; fewer bugs now and fewer in the future as many eyeballs submit fixes.

In my experience, the real stumbling block isn't simply using Free Software in proprietary products. Using Linux in an appliance isn't much of an issue if your actual product runs in a JVM.

The problem is using GPLd software in the particular components which companies believe are their competitive advantage and in a way which requires them to give up the source code.

In truth companies vastly overestimate how well secrecy and IP laws work in their favor in the marketplace. But nonetheless they believe they do, and we end up with crappier products because with GPL they'll refuse to use other, better code; or to release the code they do write so it can fixed in a timely manner by others.

Strategic use of the LGPL and BSD licenses can be quite valuable.