Node
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The main tangible result of the project is the Platform network which is a network of independent organisations all sharing their knowledge. This sharing of knowledge is achieved by adopting a common informational infrastructure, and the foundation of this structure is the concept of the "Node". A node may be a simple as a blog post or may represent a large organisation containing departments, projects, procedures and resources.
The most fundamental properties common to all nodes is that they can also be seen as a group having one or more members (a member is also a node). The concept of groups and membership is addressed at a fundamental level so that privacy and collaboration are introduced prior to all other concepts. The trust group is one of the most fundamental instances of this concept and allows the members to decide amongst themselves in private what other kinds of nodes will comprise their group such as contracts, relationships, resources and procedures etc.
Technically a node is an informational "container" of other nodes and has a globally unique identification number. Some basic properties that a node may contain are names (used to refer to or give meaning to the node in various written languages), type (to denote the node as representing for example a contact, group, project or document), and other properties depending on its use and context.
Ideally nodes will be in the form of a robust peer-to-peer network maintained by all the users running the platform's IT infrastructure.
