I am not familiar with the “Open Collective” concept and did not fully understand how this works. In my opinion, when an add-in feature is advertised I would expect that it would be available after installation. The practice that other developers use is to allow a limited trial period after which continued use requires a payment which is understandable, considering the time involved in development. You stated that work will not begin until AFTER the project is funded yet the YouTube videos show it to be operational which is somewhat confusing. I found “Free” term is loosely used by other developers is misleading as it means “Free to download” a paid product.
I hope you reach your goal as I have been looking for means to explode an assembly for quite some time.
The practice you’re talking about is for extensions that have a price.
OpenCutList is free. completely free, and if you use and enjoy it, you may participate to the expanses, like many open-source project (got to pay for servers, domain name…). this participation will also allow them to develop new tools, including the one they talked about.
I think you misread the intent of this thread : right now, they produced a video aptly named “ideas” showing an idea they would like to develop next. and given appropriate funding (totally voluntary) they may work on it (further than the video prototype) and include it in the next update of their free plugin.