The University of Hawaii is noted for some of it's early wireless work. It's free to amateurs but must be licensed by others. HP here in Santa Rosa is one of the many who have so licensed it. These are annual conferences which accept papers on a wide variety of wireless networking topics and publish proceedings. These proceedings have filled something of the same role in amateur radio networking as RFCs have in network development.
Software is easier to clone and probably easier to test and measure for the vast majority.
All of these had aspects of microwave design and signal propagation which prove relevant to high speed data flow over a wireless network. It didn't take long to discover that amateur networking was severely hampered by the lack of suitable RF development. This justified the approach based on fundamentals. I think you came in along about that time and know the rest.