Gentoo has pretty much always had a Bugzilla, even back in the early 00s... there never was an alternative plan.

The biggest thing about what's happened today though, is how a "janitor" on the infrastructure team can shut down the entire distros ability to work on bugs. The decision to shut down should have been left to someone else like robbat.

Mgorny has consistently caused issues for Gentoo, and many people have left the community after having to deal with him, but it seems comrel/devrel can't/won't remove him for whatever reason.

Edit: it looks like bgo is up now. Hopefully it stays that way.