>so the question here boils down to "does the plugin itself contain GPL code" and not to "can it be loaded into a GPL'ed program on the users computer." I don'

>so the question here boils down to "does the plugin itself contain GPL code" and not to "can it be loaded into a GPL'ed program on the users computer." I don't think it's that simple either. You mentioned the Virtual box kernel modules. There's plenty of discussion, some from Linus that some kernel modules are "derived works of Linux" and some are not. The binary Nvidea kernel drivers had to skip using a zero-copy DMA feature because of this, even if they shipped standalone. I suspect the same situation exists here. OBS, for example, has some very specific structs, header files, api functions, and other ways of interacting with plugins. A plugin made to work with OBS could very well be a derivative work, regardless of whether it ships with OBS or not. Distribution of the derivative work alone triggers the GPL in that case.