gdal/mapserver build question

[B Tuttle]

This is predominantly a GDAL question, but as we intend to use it woth
mapserver I wanted to make sure to get the mapserver angle for the
answer to this question. Apologies if this should have gone to a
different list.
I am trying to get mapserver (4.10.0) running on a Redhat 4 server. I
have discovered that Redhats version of libtiff does not support LZW
encoding, which we will need to use due to our file sizes. In the GDAL
(1.3.2) configure options I came across  the following:

  --with-libz=ARG       Include libz support (ARG=internal or libz directory)
  --with-pcraster=ARG   Include PCRaster (libcsf) support
(ARG=internal, no or path)
  --with-png=ARG        Include PNG support (ARG=internal, no or path)
  --with-libtiff=ARG    Libtiff library to use (ARG=internal, yes or path)
  --with-geotiff=ARG    Libgeotiff library to use (ARG=internal, yes or path)
  --with-jpeg=ARG       Include JPEG support (ARG=internal, no or path)
  --with-gif=ARG        Include GIF support (ARG=internal, no or path)

Building without reference to Libtiff seems to allow LZW encodding.
The IT people who will be maintaing the box I am working on would
rather not have to deal with installing libraries (ie a new libtiff)
which would not be covered by redhats up2date. So I am wondering if
there are any pitfalls anyone is aware of to using the gdal internal
support, in particular for tiff/geotiff, but also for the other
formats above. Seems like this would avoid the possiblity of library
updates breaking something. Any thoughts or reccomendations would be
greatly appreciated.