There's no big philosophy there. MS wanted autocenter so they did it. That's at the end is how all drivers work when donething is not 100% defined.
And basically, sidewinder might be the outlier here. I really didn't ever encounter any other device that enables autocenter on reset. Some devices do autocenter on DISABLE ACTUATORS though.
Wuite honestly, that autocenter on reset should've been implemented firmware-side but MS had the unfortunate privilege of developing the PID driver alongside sidewinder :/
So yes, it's just a little messy and quite honestly, maybe it's time for someone to create USB PID 2.0, but who would do such a thing? Manufacturers prefer just doing their own thing and protocols, usually doing THE EXACT SAME thing as USB PID with maybe autocenter sprinkled in.