alt Hacker NewsI guess the point with this to facilitate usage of IPv6.
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The Abstract and Introduction sections of the RFC [0] explain what the point of this is. The "Changes Compared to RFC 5549" section is especially good reading, as it both alerts you to the fact that this is an update to a seventeen year old RFC and explains what changed in the update.
Multiple ISPs in my country have already deployed IPv6 with NAT64 support, and with CLAT support now available, I think IPv6-only networks will be the next step for most ISPs.
It's also just nice to not need numbered point-to-point links (ie. just use IPv6 LL).
(this is one of those things that's really magical with OSPv3 - it just runs on IPv6 LL addresses, no need to set anything up other than set the link to be within some area and it just works! well, as much as they do with OSPF anyway.)
More like, the point is to facilitate turning off IPv4. It's much nicer to manage a single-stacked backbone, but you still need IPv4 out in the edges somehow (for many cases, anyway). I guess this is another way to do that.
Heck, I would be happy if I could remove some IPv4 linknets from my IS-IS, myself, and just route using IPv6 link-local nexthops…