Rails participated in Google’s summer of code program for the first time last year. We got four great projects and three long-term contributors from the effort, including Josh Peek and José Valim, who’ve both joined Rails core, and Emilio Tagua, who revitalized Arel and integrated it with Active Record.

We applied again this year but didn’t make the cut, so we moped for a day then thought, why not make this happen ourselves. So here we are kicking off the first Ruby summer of code together with Engine Yard and Ruby Central.

Head over to rubysoc.org to get started and start following @rubysoc for news.

We’re following Google’s example closely:

• students are paid a $5000 stipend to work full-time during their summer break
• a group of Ruby gurus volunteer their time as mentors
• mentors vote on student proposals based on usefulness, benefit to the Ruby community, and history of motivated open source contribution

We’re looking for full- and half-summer sponsors as well as individual donations. We’ll fund as many students as we can. Donate this week and our own Aaron aka tenderlove will match it! Aaron tapped out, you dogs :-) Thanks Aaron! Now Chad and Kelly Fowler are matching! Donate now!

Ruby gurus, consider mentoring a student this summer. Volunteering to guide the next generation of Ruby developers is a challenging and rewarding effort.

Students: start your engines! Check out our ideas list and start brainstorming. Applications begin on April 5!