I think the point that we are trying to make here is that EL isn't mandatory and if we decide to have a setup where EL is not present we get a warning in the logs. Most embedded containers bring indeed an EL implementation but other don't (i.e. Netty). We have a "validation starter" that brings an EL implementation for the user.

Anyway, I think this can be summarized easily: if Hibernate validator supports an environment where EL isn't present, there must be a way to avoid the warning.

Thanks!