I'm definitely against removing development tools, as for one they're invaluable when it comes to remastering (I remaster with the LiveCD), and general testing purposes - if your program crashes, it can't wreck the system.
It's amazing how many people ask on forums of mini-Knoppix remasters (i.e. Damn Small or Feather) for programs like gcc, so a LiveCD with these tools is obviously in high demand.
Also, it helps attract Windows techies and programmers - "Look, you can even compile something from this CD in C, C++, Perl, Python..."

I'll take an in-depth look at the Knoppix package list later and try to give exact packages that in my opinion are merely ancillary.