Launch External App From Plug-in

We currently sell a software application on Windows and macOS. Included with this product are Photoshop and Lightroom plug-ins we developed which extracts image data which is then processed by our application.

We are investigating the possibility of distributing a plug-in through Adobe Exchange which would be a slimmed down version of our product. The plug-in functionality would essentially be the same, but we would then need to pass the image data (saved to disk) to a lightweight application.

What we need to know, before we plan the best way to achieve this is:

  1. Can a plug-in hosted on the Adobe Exchange include a separate application as part of the payload?
  2. Are C++/objC based plug-ins developed with the Adobe SDK allowed to call external applications?

We can achieve 2) now with our plug-ins, but we need to know if there are restrictions when distributing through Exchange.

Thanks!