Most STL implementations have always done this. This is one reason why it's better to use the empty() check for an empty container instead of size() == 0 for all container types.

Also, linked lists are notoriously crap for cache coherency / processor pre-fetching and branch prediction by processors anyway, given that there's no guarantee where each node will be allocated - the only way to do that is pull them off a slab allocator or something, in which case you might as well use a vector or deque anyway...