Success of projects like this is not usually based on merit, but on how many people you can convince to go along with it until it eventually becomes a thing of its own sustainability. So, the recipe here would be to:
1. Be "good enough" and easy enough to get started such that early adopters have a great first experience speeding up something important to them. (hook them) 2. Be open and friendly to potential incoming contributors, letting them land changes, have a say in the discussion, and generally be part of it all. (community build) 3. Encourage people to share their successes and hopes / dreams for how great $X is on their blogs, HN, social media, etc. (propaganda) 4. Goto 1.
In this case, step 3 will work best by highlighting that "You actually don't need most of the dynamic features of Python" as the central narrative.
One big caveat is that Codon choose to not use Python semantics for `%` so the basic test of `print(-2 % 5)` fails unless you run it with `-numerics=py`... which should just be the default behavior -- and a great first community patch / discussion!