The origins of OSPF date back to the late 1980s by the IETF. OSPFv1 was published in 1989 and OSPF was published in 1991. OSPFv3 for IPv6 was first published in 1997, and a later revision came out in 1999. For the RFC aficionados, RFC2740 was really the one that introduced OSPFv3 for IPv6 in 1999, but it was replaced by RFC5340 in 2008.
So, OSPF has been around for a long time and even the IPv6 version of it has been around for ten years, although we still have not fully embraced it.
There is another link state protocol that I will briefly touch upon, which is IS-IS. This protocol has be around since the late 1970s but not until 2008 was RFC5308 ready to go for IPv6. This is still a long time and very little has been spoken about it.
When you get to your CCNP or CCIE studies, you will get somewhat deeper into the protocol, but really it would take working for a company...