Hey Steve Ebersole, as mentioned in JIRA:

Hey @sebersole, in general, yes, but I didn't have as big of an issue with this one in general. Karaf itself pulls in this same dependency if you install their out-of-the-box "JTA" feature (@psiroky, that's the main reason I chose that artifact and not JBoss – consistency). That doesn't mean we should have had to add it here, but it wasn't as big as a problem as the prior problems.

So, I'm fine either way!