Construindo libstrophe from source funcionou. Os comandos completos para construir palavrões no Ubuntu 12.04 são:
# Install repo dependencies
sudo apt-get -y install git automake autoconf libssl-dev libexpat1-dev libncursesw5-dev libglib2.0-dev libnotify-dev libcurl3-dev libxss-dev libotr2-dev libtool libexpat1-dev
# Install libstrophe
mkdir -p ~/.local/src/libstrophe
cd ~/.local/src/libstrophe
git clone https://github.com/strophe/libstrophe.git .
git checkout 0.8.7 # adapt to new version
mkdir m4
./bootstrap.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install
# install profanity
mkdir -p ~/.local/src/profanity
cd ~/.local/src/profanity
git clone https://github.com/boothj5/profanity.git .
git checkout 0.4.5 # adapt to current version
mkdir m4
./bootstrap.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install