These pointers point to the new nodes when duplicating, and their even used to point to "original" nodes for "localized" trees. They're just a bad design decision that make code confusing and buggy. Instead, node copy functions now optionally add to a map of old to new socket pointers. The case where the compositor abused these pointers as "original" pointers are handled by looking up the string node names. Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D13518