As far as I know, the story has never really been covered by the tech press. Closest it's come is that some of the people involved may have inspired some of the characters and plot lines in Silicon Valley. Middle-out refers to b-frames, which were heavily patented, so we avoided them. Unfortunately that causes a popping artifact every time a keyframe comes along...

I think what might really be interesting was the decision process to open-source vp3, AKA Theora, the ancestor of vp8, vp9, and AV1. Even though it was only marginally competitive with mpeg-4, the existence of a free alternative, seemingly unencumbered by the sort of patent problems afflicting MPEG, put a check on MPEG becoming a virtual monopoly.

In 2010, Google took the baton with the acquisition of on2, and doubled down on the open-source approach.