[etaoins]

It's contributed to the open source ARM desktop/server community quite a bit. While ARM has had first class support in for embedded and mobile for a long time people weren't really running X11, Gnome, database servers, etc. As a result the experience was rough around the edges.

Now it's easy for any open source developer to pick up a working ARM machine for $35 for testing. qemu is an option but running on actual hardware is more rewarding. I've personally worked on open source code that would not have ARM support if something like the Raspberry Pi didn't exist.

ARM desktops and servers have become more common recently but I think Raspberry Pi's laid some of the groundwork for that.