I'm in the early concept and planning stages of a large-ish interactive installation. The installation is a one-off for a large client; think a mix between science museum interactive stands/kiosk-type devices and product showroom where visitors are guided around. Lots of networking, AV, lighting control, custom electronics, etc. etc..
The setup will likely include a motley assortment of tech from Windows PCs to Raspberry Pis, to *nix servers. A lot of closed-source custom software will be written for all this, but run on a variety of platforms, likely encompassing all sorts of licenses. There are no plans to modify any FOSS source code, only to build a somewhat complex stack out of various building blocks, but that stack is in effect part of the product in the end.
So since setting up, say, a MySQL server (unmodified) on a dedicated/purpose-bought piece of on-site hardware could be part of the complete system what would the licensing implications be? Would that for instance call for a commercial MySQL license or is it arguably "internal" still? Or would the use of a GPL Linux distro (again unmodified) on that hardware somehow impact everything else (esp. the closed-source apps at the very top of the stack) since it's part of the complete "product"?
Should note that while the software written specifically for this installation will be closed-source, the code will be held in escrow, so the client can get that too, pursuant to certain terms. And of course it's no problem to provide the client with any open source stuff used in the setup; that's as free to them as it is to us, we'd just be setting it up.