IRC TDT aims to be a system that distinguishes individual conversation threads and topics on IRC, allowing IRC clients to highlight the different threads as well as programs to extract useful information from the threads.
There are many sources for TDT system design on the web, but I do not think this project is interesting enough to merit coding one of them. I will instead try to email some TDT authors asking for them to release their code free software.
Perhaps I should create a site where people petition researchers to release their code free software.