Due to AI abuse, this Bugzilla instance is available only to authenticated users (bz.apache.org)

The Apache Software Foundation has restricted its Bugzilla instance to authenticated users after reporting a significant increase in abuse “largely driven by AI scraping.” From now on, viewing and interacting with ASF Bugzilla requires logging in or creating an account; users must acknowledge and understand the Apache License 2.0 and certify that any contributed code, patches or documentation can be redistributed under the same license. The notice emphasizes that ASF Bugzilla needs legitimate logins and passwords to continue operating. For the AI/ML community this is notable: public bug trackers have been a rich source of labeled code, patches and issue metadata for training and evaluation. Requiring authentication aims to curb large-scale scraping and abuse, but it raises practical and ethical implications—reduced raw access for dataset curators, extra friction for research reproducibility, and disruption to automated tooling or integrations that previously crawled Bugzilla. Technically, this move signals broader shifts toward gated access (accounts, API keys, rate limits, licensing checks) as maintainers balance openness with protection against automated harvesting. Researchers and tool builders will need to follow ASF’s account and licensing requirements or pursue alternative data-sharing arrangements.