It would great if Gravity Forms dropped the requirement for jQuery in the front end. I was really hoping that they would do it for 2.5. (there is still time Gravity Forms…)
I no longer user jQuery on my websites and instead just use plain Javascript. With all the new JS features it isn’t necessary to use jQuery anymore. I understand there might be a little refactoring needed for Date drop downs, etc, but the rest of it is easy to change out to plain Javascript.
There is a way to remove it if you don’t use the Ajax feature, but with ajax=true then jQuery is required 
in the lower left on this page to add a note for our product team. Thank you.