That library was not the only consideration. The main consideration was to cut-off at a certain point for 4.0 so that we can avoid having too many things to consider going forward. There was a message about this on the list a while back as well as a discussion at SF.
Now, I get the argument to have compatibility for self-built versions, and I could see a point, where we make a switch for a certain library to have a compatibility mode. But I am not sure if this should be the way forward in this case. Much rather have the nuisance to compile a more recent version together with Wireshark, than have one more thing to support
regards
Roland