After using drop-in .htaccess file in a few of my projects I realized that people have problems with it because their Apache doesn’t have the modules enabled.
Then I realized that apache doesn’t have any of those three modules (mod_deflate, mod_rewrite and mod_expires) enabled by default.
It means I found a first project that needs some “Fast by default” treatment!
If someone knows some Apache developers, please let me know, otherwise I’ll just send email to a mailing list (their Bugzilla is down, at the moment).