To settle the above discussion, I can confirm that I have not written a single line of Novo code yet, but have instead being working incredibly hard on phase4 for Gulden.
My involvement in Novo so far has only been some very brief use of my time to advise on various technical aspects of what is and isn't possible and to verify that deadlines are achievable, which they are.
The amount of work from me required initially to get Novo going is really not that great in the scheme of things and the extra developer power it brings should more than offset that in terms of overall dev time available for the code base that both projects will have in common, so should actually ultimately lead to me having more time to work on important stuff and less time dealing with things that other developers could be taking care of.
This assumes the success of Novo, should it not be a success, then nothing much changes other than a small amount of lost time and a need to try persue other funding avenues.

Hope this is of assistance.