I think you can blame Postel's law for being self-defeating. If the whole ecosystem is conservative in what it accepts, the whole ecosystem will be conservative in what it sends (because otherwise it won't be part of it). If the whole ecosystem is liberal in what it accepts (or just a significant part of it), some parts of it will be liberal in what it sends (because not everyone is going to rigidly follow the spec once they get something working well enough for the parts they test with), and that's where the problem comes from.