Abstract: A method of distributing status information is described, regarding a digraph in a logically organized system of groups of entities related to each other and to be represented by digraphs, and a device for using such a method. In a system which comprises a number of groups which may be represented by digraphs, the lacking of a node having a particular status in a group is detected by the method. When applying the method to a distributed object-oriented system, in which a root is such a node having a particular status, incremental distributed garbage collection is realized. The invention is also effective in the case in which cycles or subcycles occur in graph of objects referring to each other. Upon realizing garbage collection, inaccessible data information occupying memory space is removed from memory to thereby free previously occupied memory space.