> RFC 6762 was authored by Apple Inc. employees Stuart Cheshire and Marc Krochmal, and Apple's Bonjour zeroconf networking software implements mDNS. That service will automatically resolve the private IP addresses of link-local Macintosh computers running MacOS and mobile devices running iOS if .local is appended to their hostnames. In addition, Bonjour devices will use those .local hostnames when advertising services to DNS Service Discovery clients.
> Most Linux distributions also incorporate and are configured to use zeroconf.
> ..The connection of Macintosh and Linux computers or zeroconf peripherals to Windows networks can be problematic if those networks include name servers that use .local as a search domain for internal devices.
Kinda weird to blame the people who made an RFC, instead of the industry leader who recommended using .local completely on their own, without support from the wider industry. This is explained in the next couple paragraphs, where you stopped copying.
You're right, the confusion about the use of .local domain seems to be more due to Microsoft going back-and-forth about it.
> At one time, Microsoft at least suggested the use of .local as a pseudo-TLD for small private networks with internal DNS servers.
> ..However, more recent articles have cautioned or advised against such use of the .local TLD.
> Microsoft TechNet article 708159[7] suggested .local
> ..but later recommended against it.
> The Microsoft Learn article "Selecting the Forest Root Domain"[8] cautioned against using .local
> By default, a freshly installed Windows Server 2016 Essentials also adds .local as the default dns-prefix when a user doesn't select the advanced option, resulting in a domain with .local extension.
> mDNS implementations
> RFC 6762 was authored by Apple Inc. employees Stuart Cheshire and Marc Krochmal, and Apple's Bonjour zeroconf networking software implements mDNS. That service will automatically resolve the private IP addresses of link-local Macintosh computers running MacOS and mobile devices running iOS if .local is appended to their hostnames. In addition, Bonjour devices will use those .local hostnames when advertising services to DNS Service Discovery clients.
> Most Linux distributions also incorporate and are configured to use zeroconf.
> ..The connection of Macintosh and Linux computers or zeroconf peripherals to Windows networks can be problematic if those networks include name servers that use .local as a search domain for internal devices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local