[_ck_]

Web compression is on an “offered/accepted” handshake of sorts.

It would not affect clients that do not support gzip.

Everytime IE or Firefox (etc.) requests a webpage, it tells the server “I support gzip” in the headers and then if the server supports it, it sends it that way.

Technically compression can be forced through the server – if trac is under the same litespeed server as wordpress/bbpress then it’s just a matter of making sure it’s enabled.

A quick test shows both the svn+trac are using apache, so depending on which version it’s either a matter of building with mod_gzip (for apache 1.3.x) or if apache 2.0 they need to just add a couple of easy httpd.conf directives.

Really though, Matt knows how good litespeed is over apache, both the trac+svn should on litespeed. I bet it could even work with the free 150 connection version instead of buying a license.