Why is this change needed? To me (noob) eyes it only adds verbose code with no benefits at all?

Tsst, empty line ;)

Well, the node has two outputs : a vector and a value. Previously the code would do the following:

vector = cross(input1, input2);
value = normalize(vector);

and now (fixed):

vector = cross(input1, input2);
value = length(vector);
vector = normalize(vector);

That's how Cycles goes, and also GLSL except the normalization of the vector was missing at the end.

Also I admit it's a tad verbose but apparently there are no cross and normalize function to return a vector in BLI. As far as I could see, they only return a single float.

Okay so who am I now to act as the code style police from time to time in this code review system... :P

I do not see the issue with value = normalize_v3(vector);, normalize_v3() does return the length of the vector (before normalization), and normalizes the vector in-place…

hmm, I did not see that... guess I just got stuck on the name... also, quite a funny one: while debugging, I kept changing the code but couldn't see any difference, until I realized I was compiling a release build while launching a debug one to test! :/ Anyhows, will update.

Why not to divide by outval? Would save calculating vector length second time.

Sounds fair, will do.