Well I heard back from Matt. Sounds like he's not actively maintaining tcpreplay anymore and it doesn't look like NFR purchased the copyright or other intellectual property surrounding the nidsbench research.
I've decided to ask Matt if he's interested in taking an active maintainership role in the app, before I do anything. If Matt decides he's not interested, then I'll take over and merge my patches into the "new official tree".
In the corporate world, things changed rather quickly for me. Last friday I was told it would take weeks or even a month before I moved over to engineering. Today, as I was walking out to my car, my boss informed me that they've decided to accelerate the transition, and I'll be out of marketing by the end of the week. All I can say is _wow_. Of course saying a week and it actually taking a week are two different things, but things are looking pretty good.