There have been numerous postings announcing that Microsoft is going to start shipping
jQuery alongside Visual Studio. If you haven't read about this already, see
Scott Guthrie's post.
This is wonderful news for the developer community for many reasons.
First, the acceptance of jQuery by Microsoft should be contagious. A lot of large enterprise organizations get their software from Microsoft, and their software tools from Microsoft. The rule in those circles seems to be "No one ever got fired for using Microsoft", and so, Microsoft tools tend to dominate the short list of what can be used in an enterprise environment. With Microsoft shipping and supporting jQuery, these developers should be able to get the buy-in from management that they need to start using jQuery.
Second, Microsoft has, in a big way, included the developer community in their path forward, and embraced existing Open source software. Microsoft has a long history of having a competing product in every market space, from web browsers and search, to video game machines and mp3 players. This seemed to have extended to the developer division, too, as MSTest and Entity Framework came in as competing offerrings. With jQuery, they are jumping in and providing support to their customers who use it, and planning to contribute tests, bug fixes, and patches back to the jQuery project. This is an exciting step forward, and leaves me optimistic about the future of Microsoft's relationship with Open Source and the developer community.