Actually, Automattic is completely separate to WordPress as a project. While some of the commit team are Automattic employees, most aren't (at least of the active ones; there's a few that work mostly on Automattic internal projects).

Automattic themselves contribute a hell of a lot of time and effort back to WordPress. There's tonnes of plugins that they've contributed back (http://profiles.wordpress.org/automattic), they often test patches that might break things (with the scale of WP.com meaning they do break, and quickly), and they employ people to work full-time on WordPress. Automattic is pretty much the worst example of a company that doesn't contribute back.

As for the ticket you mention above, that has been deferred because we're still working on the specifics on how to handle that in a backwards compatible manner. This is being handled in a plugin at the moment, with hopes for integration later: http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-db-driver/

(If there are any specific tickets you want to point to that haven't been accepted, please let me know and I'll re-review them for you. Intense Debate is not an excuse for the built-in commenting sucking, especially since ID is basically dead.)