It makes sense that a null implementation is permitted to cover cases such as the one illustrated above where all writes are always synchronized. However, it violates the spirit of the law (so to speak) as discussed in the normative section to have a null implementation where writes are not always synchronized (i.e., cached). As another commenter noted, the wording was not intended to give the implementor a get-out-of-jail-free card ("it was merely a request; I didn't actually have to even try to fulfill it").