You just started the discussion!
My idea here was (like in fits and in votable) to write in the most restrictive set of specifications by default.
Personally, I never use IPAC tables, so I don't know if the common use case is to write plain IPAC tables for personal use  or to write the (more restrictive) DBMS format.
Note that every DBMS tables is also valid as plain IPAC.

Would you prefer `strict = False` as default?
@taldcroft @keflavich What do you think?