> creating a language that is closely-related to Python, arguably one of the world's most popular languages, and allows / encourages porting large Python codebases, seems like a pretty worth goal.

well they do state "copying bad design is not good design" in the main page. Actually porting Python code to Nim is not that difficult especially when people care enough to create pages like: https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/wiki/Nim-for-Python-Programm...