I use a couple of mini pcs in exactly the setup you are talking about. Only downside is throughput. Anything built in is gonna be faster for read write ops, but usb3 is plenty fast for most things including media and data sync. I run Ubuntu with ZFS, and created raid arrays for data redundancy. It works really well. I virtualize using Incus with docker inside of those tiny VMs. It’s awesome.
You might reach out to the open source initiative if your app is open source. They have lawyers, and may be willing to provide guidance at the very least. I’m just guessing, and don’t work for the OSI, nor know for sure whether they will or wont help in any way. Just another place to look. At the very least they may be able to suggest attorneys who might be willing to help out.