After upgrade to RichFaces 4.5 I have a problem with null value in rich:select.

My xhtml looks like this:

<rich:select id="id1" value="#{object.property}" converter="#{propertyConverter}">
     <f:selectItem itemLabel="-- no value --" itemValue="#{null}" />
     <f:selectItems value="#{myBean.propertyValues}" var="prop" itemValue="#{prop}" itemLabel="#{prop.description}" />
</rich:select>

And the converter:

public class PropertyConverter extends Converter {

  @Override
  public Object getAsObject(FacesContext facesContext, UIComponent component, String s) {
       return dao.findByKey(Long.valueOf(s));
  }
  
  @Override
  public String getAsString(FacesContext facesContext, UIComponent component, Object value) {
     if (value == null || value.equals("")) {
          return "";
     } else {
          return (Property) value).getId().toString();
     }
  }
}

The class Property has id of type Long and it has equals and hashCode methods overriden.

When I used RichFaces 4.3.6, everything worked fine. When I use h:selectOneMenu instead of rich:select, everything works fine. When I replace itemLabel="-- no value --" with and empty string (itemLabel=""), everything works fine. But rich:select (which I'd like to use because of layout) with not empty label (which I'd like to use because it's more readable to end user) does not work. When I choose no value option and try to submit, I get an error that the value is invalid.

Do you have any idea where is the error? I use RichFaces 4.5.4 Final and Mojarra 2.2.10.