I haven't looked at it, but it's purely functional (so no destructive operations such as set!). It can't be called Scheme, because it's a subset of RnRS Scheme; that's why Racket isn't called PLT-Scheme any more. I can imagine this as a teaching tool (though the FAQ says the error messages aren't good), or perhaps usable as an extension language.

I'm going to look at it as a scripting tool that compiles to C.

I used to work for a company whose internal communication often claimed “world domination” as its ultimate goal. I just looked at revenue estimates for its market sector, this company isn't in the top 5, and is far behind the leader. Let's just leave Owl's world domination goal as aspirational.

It's the other way around for Racket, where R5RS and R6RS are subsets :-)

IIUC Racket's new name came about from, basically, brand confusion: to avoid being (mis)understood as "yet another implementation of Scheme" rather than as the thing-in-itself it had become.