Ember Data with a root key. A non-standard REST protocol?
ember-data, ember.js, node.js
Solution
You can point your team to the specification being developed at http://jsonapi.org/. If you check the about page you will see that "JSON API is extracted from the JSON transport implicitly defined by Ember Data's REST adapter." There seems to be a reasonably large amount of buy in from the community as of now. I am not aware of any other ongoing effort to create a JSON specification. Therefore, I expect to JSON API to be the standard moving forward and, if anything, there will be less tooling that supports the format your team mates are advocating out of the box.
In fact, the JSON API home page seems to be written for you: "If you've ever argued with your team about the way your JSON responses should be formatted, JSON API is your anti-bikeshedding weapon." (For those unfamiliar with the term "bikeshedding" see here.)
Problem
I have to make a change to my application where my team wants to remove the root keys from the JSON data. However, I really like the out-of-the box feel for this, but my team is arguing that this is a non-standard REST protocol, so we need to stay away from it. Rather than changing my serializer to fit this, is there an argument I can put against this so that I can continue working with this out of the box? Or are they correct in that Ember shouldn't be requiring this?