In .3ds spotlights are two "spatial" objects, one is the light itself and another is where it is focused. These two objects can move around in the same way TriMesh objects move around. It would be easier for my 3ds animating to have a "spotlight target" and "spotlight" spatial to use where the "spotlight" spatial looks at the global position of "spotlight target" spatial.
This would also allow people to do really neat effects like attach a spotlight target to their character and have lights follow them around.
So, this second node just denotes the orientation of the light node? What if we allowed any node to do this? Give the light node a track method with a Spatial as a parameter?
That seems very spiffy indeed 
Would work out great.