How does QGIS execute Python plugins?

Question

I am trying to run a python script from within a python plugin. The script runs a CGIHTTPServer in a separate thread. It works as expected when executed from the command line and i can issue requests from the browser but when run from the plugin as an import the browser never loads the issued request. Any advice?

Here is my server code:

"""
A stoppable, threadable version of Jurgen's origin server
"""

import CGIHTTPServer
import BaseHTTPServer
import httplib
import threading
import sys

class RequestHandler(CGIHTTPServer.CGIHTTPRequestHandler):
    cgi_directories = ['/scripts']

    def do_QUIT (self):
        """Send 200 OK response, and set server.stop to True"""
        self.send_response(200)
        self.end_headers()
        self.server.stop = True

class StoppableHttpServer(BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer):
    """A http server that reacts to self.stop flag"""

    def serve_forever (self):
        """Handle one request at a time until stopped."""
        self.stop = False
        while not self.stop:
            sys.stdout.flush()
            self.handle_request()

class ServerInThread(threading.Thread):
    """A class designed to start a stoppable HttpServer in a separate thread."""

    def __init__(self):
        """Initialize the port to use for the server and start the thread"""
        self.port = 3030
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)

    def run(self):
        """Method that is called when the start() method of an instance is called"""
        server = StoppableHttpServer(("", self.port), RequestHandler)
        server.serve_forever()

def stop_server(port):
    """send QUIT request to http server"""
    conn = httplib.HTTPConnection("localhost:%d" % port)
    conn.request("QUIT", "/")
    conn.getresponse()

And this is what my qgis plugin does. It has 2 button with the following methods:

from syncServer import *

# other initialization code

# Method to start the server
def startServer(self):
    """Start sync server in a seperate thread"""
    # check if server instance exists
    if not hasattr(self, 'threaded_server') or self.threaded_server is None:
        self.logger.info("Starting new server thread")
        self.threaded_server = ServerInThread()
        self.logger.info("Starting server")
        self.threaded_server.start()
        self.logger.info("Serving at port %d", self.threaded_server.port)
    else:
        self.logger.info("A server thread already exists")

# Method to stop the server
def stopServer(self):
    """Stop sync server via http request"""
    # check if server instance exists
    if hasattr(self, 'threaded_server') and self.threaded_server is not None:
        self.logger.info("Stopping server")
        stop_server(self.threaded_server.port)
        self.logger.info("Stopped server")
        self.threaded_server = None
    else:
        self.logger.info("No server thread exists")

Thanks in advance.