Open source contribution is not a requirement for providing feedback but people who actually understand the industry are more legitimate in most people's eyes.
This is a discussion about Canonical's strategy, which happens to involve technical products and services -- it is not a technical discussion. I see no reason to think that someone's software development chops would correlate with their ability to meaningfully contribute to this discussion.
We're talking about the desktop computing industry, not the OS development industry. You don't need a PhD in computer science to tell a good user experience from a bad one.
