To squeeze into the limited amount of filesystem storage available in an embedded system I'm currently playing with, I would like to eliminate any files that could reasonably be removed without significantly impacting functionality or performance.  The *.py, *.pyo, and *.pyc files in the Python library account for a sizable amount of space, I'm wondering which of these options would be most reasonable for a Python 2.6 installation in a small embedded system:

Keep *.py, eliminate *.pyc and *.pyo (Maintain ability to debug, performance suffers?)
Keep *.py and *.pyc, eliminate *.pyo (Does optimization really buy anything?)
Keep *.pyc, eliminate *.pyo and *.py (Will this work?)
Keep *.py, *.pyc, and *.pyo (All are needed?)
I would recommend keeping only .py files. The difference in startup time isn't that great, and having the source around is a plus, as it will run under different python versions without any issues.
As of python 2.6, setting sys.dont_write_bytecode to True will suppress compilation of .pyc and .pyo files altogether, so you may want to use that option if you have 2.6 available.
Python *.py, *.pyo, *.pyc: Which can be eliminated for an Embedded System?