They really need to make the requirements for students a little more clear (for example, I'm a senior in HS, can I apply?). I'd assume they'll flesh that out before they open the student app.

Also, from the questions for students they list there, it seems like they might get some pretty bad outcomes:

>Why do you use Ruby and/or Rails? How would you like to see them improve?

Outline the specific project you're proposing.

Why is this important to the Ruby and/or Rails communities at large? Why is this important to you?

List a clear set of goals/milestones you'll hit during the summer, along with a rough timeline. Be specific about your deliverables.

What are the "unknowns" in this project for you? What kind of pitfalls could you run into?

How will you measure progress? How will you handle falling behind?

To liken it to startups/YC, they're asking a lot about the idea, but not at all about "the team" (the applicant). Anyone can say "I'm going to make something awesome" even if they aren't very good at writing Ruby and will almost certainly not do well.

Sure, they don't give you money unless you hit milestones, but they could experience plenty of projects that technically do what they should but are so badly written that they're certain to go nowhere.

That said, I'm really excited for this both as a potential participant and as a Rubyist who would love to see some cool new projects come of it.

Edit: They also should make it a bit more clear what kinds of projects they want. Just things that are directly useful to ruby programmers (libraries, Rails plugins, etc)? Cool tools that are useful to developers in general (something like http://hurl.it/)? Any piece of software that's useful to the world and written in Ruby (like some good website written in Rails)? My guess is the first 2 only, but that's just a guess.