My healthy pessimism says (and I don’t mean that specifically personal):
I don’t trust a rethorically trained person with a suit, tie and toothpaste smile when it comes to goal-oriented business.
And of course, - Mr. uche40 did not come completely unprepared, because he already has something in his drawer, which he has certainly already submitted to the developers by private message.
So the absolute priority would be the transparency of the “plug-in” source codes, so that one can see how SHOTCUT is further influenced.
I don’t think of any subscriptions or add-ons that have to be done live and online, because I use SHOTCUT exclusively offline and I want it to stay that way.
By the way:
The time when this is offered to us seems suspicious to me, - especially because the support of Ot 5.9 LTS ended in May which is discussed here in detail:
Just a thought.