That one wasn't middleware but rather a patent issue, the code in question was written by Carmack but he had unwittingly rediscovered a technique that had already been patented by Creative Labs. Id licensed it from Creative for Doom 3s commercial release but legal wouldn't sign off on including it with the open source version so Carmack swapped it out for a different, slower algorithm.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/patent-issue-forces-new...