What Is Gentoo Bugzilla's Bot Policy and Who Does It Apply To?

Updated

Gentoo's Bugzilla main page states that anyone running a spider, bot, or automated process against the bug tracker should read the Bot Policy before doing so. The notice applies to automated access of any kind — crawlers, scrapers, monitoring scripts, and similar tools — not just to search engine spiders.

Who the policy applies to

The wording on the main page is broad: "Do you run a spider, bot or some automated process against the Gentoo bugzilla? Please read the Bot Policy."

That covers, for example:

  • Search engine and archival crawlers
  • Custom scrapers that pull bug data
  • Uptime or availability monitors that poll Bugzilla pages
  • Scripts that query or submit bugs programmatically
  • Any recurring automated job that hits the tracker

If your tool makes requests without a human clicking each one, the notice applies to you.

What the main page tells you to do

The instruction is procedural rather than technical: read the Bot Policy before sending automated requests. The main page does not reproduce the policy's contents, so the specific rules — permitted request rates, required identification, blocked user agents, or contact procedures — must be read at the policy itself, linked from the Bugzilla main page.

Why the policy exists

The stated purpose is to protect the bug tracker from excessive or disruptive automated traffic. Bugzilla is a shared service used by Gentoo developers and reporters, and the main page frames the policy as a way to keep automated access from degrading the service for other users. In practice, that means the policy is about load, politeness, and coordination rather than about prohibiting automation outright.

Practical implications

  • Check before you crawl. If you are building a scraper or running a bot against bugs.gentoo.org, locate and read the Bot Policy first.
  • Expect constraints on request volume. A policy aimed at preventing disruptive traffic typically sets expectations for how often automated clients may make requests.
  • Identify your client. Automated processes that can be contacted or recognized are easier for administrators to manage than anonymous traffic.
  • Respect the same rules as human users. The main page also directs bug reporters to the Gentoo Bug Reporting Guide and notes that AI-generated work should not be included in bug reports, per Gentoo's AI policy — separate rules that apply alongside the bot policy.

Related pages on the same site

The Bugzilla main page links to the Bug Reporting Guide, the AI policy, and the Bot Policy, plus entry points for filing a bug, searching, creating an account, and documentation. If your work involves both automated access and reporting, read the bot and reporting policies together, since they govern different parts of the same workflow.