Hi Shain
I upgraded my client's Cisco FWSM from 4.0.3 to 4.1.7 few months ago, and everything was good. I didn't have to do incremental upgrade as proposed by Cisco (best practise). This saves time because in the real world, we don't normally have the luxury of long maintenance window (in a non-HA environment).
However, if you choose to upgarde to 4.0.17, that's fine too. The upgrade has no bearing to the IOS version currently running in your C6509 chassis. This is because the FWSM runs on its' own operating system.
For further details on this, you could refer to http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/fwsm/fwsm41/release/notes/fwsmrn41.html
If you ask me personally, go for 4.1.9 as your FWSM will then be covered with the latest bug fixes.
P/S: If you think this comment is helpful, please do rate them accordingly.
Warm regards,
Ramraj Sivagnanam Sivajanam