why do you think they released the miner source and not a fully built miner. i think maybe so the people who know how to build it can locate any errors.
It works just fine ;]
fork@instacash:~/maxcoin-cpuminer# ./minerd --help
Usage: minerd [OPTIONS]
Options:
-a, --algo=ALGO specify the algorithm to use
scrypt scrypt(1024, 1, 1) (default)
sha256d SHA-256d
keccak Keccak SHA3 (MaxCoin)