The reality is that JPA providers can completely ignore that element within a Java SE environment. And I believe some of them do (OpenJPA ignores it, if I remember correctly, but maybe that's changed). Considering it within Java SE was purely a "user friendliness" effort early on.

Regardless, my vote was that if we were going to consider it, we consider all of it, including the explicit values. So, your changes were pushed. We can keep up the discussion, though.