If NEM software is mostly cloned from NXT with a few changes 1:40 will be a very good deal.
You seem to be misinformed. There is no common code between NEM and NXT. Aside from the "N", they're completely different.
Jaguar0625, I did not intend to sound critical with my use of the word 'clone'.
A better description for what you are doing might be 'remake', like with a movie, or 'cover', like with a song or piece of music.
There is room for deviation from the original.
I believe I understand what you are trying to achieve.
Our initial plan was to base NEM on the NXT code, which is why there are two versions of the NXT code in the repository. However, this project garnered a really large amount of interest and we have more dev resources than I expected. At this time, it is the consensus of the dev team to base NEM on some of the NXT ideas but write the code from scratch. While this will take a little more time and effort now, I think it will set up NEM much better in the long run.
The goal is not for NEM to be a NXT copy and paste coin. IMO, there's no value in that. With NEM, we want to take some of the best ideas of NXT and Bitcoin and create something new and, hopefully, better.