Pretty much everyone on the list (myself included) disagrees with what Mike is proposing.

I very much doubt myself that any new core plugins will be made and included with WP. Automattic has many useful plugins themselves, but they are not included with core, because they aren't of use to a significant majority of users.

Features should never be moved from the core into "core plugins", but rather into normal plugins hosted on the WordPress.org Plugin Repository.

@Chip Bennett - You're mistaken in saying that Hello Dolly is a waste of resources and that it is installed by default. If you're concerned about a 2.17kb file, then you really need a better host. Additionally, it acts as an example file to developers on how to develop plugins.