By CHRIS ONSTOTT
The Provo-based Novell Corporation continues to try to control damage caused by an Oct. 20 article in Infoworld Magazine that reported the existence of a millennium bug in NetWare 3.12, a software program by Novell.
According to the Infoworld article, after 11:59 p.m. on December 31, 1999, the year stated reverts back to 1988.
Novell, which called the article sensationalistic, pointed out that a solution already exists to the millennium bug problem in NetWare.
'On October 20, 1997, an article incorrectly reported that Novell currently does not provide customers a solution for automated distribution and administration of the Year 2000 client patch,' a Novell press release stated. 'In fact, Novell has released an automatic client update solution for NetWare.'
Infoworld Magazine claims their story accurately reported the information that the Novell Corporation provided them.
'We had confirmations from Novell that they didn't have a way of distributing it,' Infoworld Networking and Telecom Editor Matthew Wolocott said. 'They are now saying that, yes, they did have a way of doing it.'
Novell said beta patches that resolve the year 2000 problem are also available ahead of schedule.
Novell said they have asked for a clarification in an upcoming issue of Infoworld and, according to the company's website, all new versions of Novell products will be ready for the year 2000 by the end of 1997.
Wolocott said that he was not aware of any request for a clarification of the Infoworld article on the part of Novell.
A Novell spokesman had no comment when asked why the software was originally released within years of the year 2000 with no provisions to accommodate the problem.
The millennium bug may be especially serious because of the number of users of Novell's NetWare 3.12 software.
'Last time we checked, 70 percent of our readers have NetWare 3.12 in some form,' Eric Hammond, an editor for Infoworld, said.
Novell plans to distribute the patches over the Internet and to use other methods of distribution to get the patches to those running NetWare 3.12.
Patches for Novell software are available over the Internet at Novell's site at www.novell.com.