Yep firing up an old Dom disc is a definate time-killer. I even fired up Dom1 recently and enjoyed it.
1) Electronic distribution is not a "standardized" thing yet. Believe me, its not as simple as it seems it should be. Everyone is kindof doing their own and there are a ton of headaches involved that people dont realize. People like stardock havent released a tried-and-tested installable module for it the way you can add a forum or a shopping cart to a web site. (Im not Shrapnel so this is just general info gleaned from the gaming and the system admin forums)
2) I also would like to see a list of features, and changes. But I suspect that the time it would take to write it would take us past the release date
3) No idea. But Im not big on information files like that. Id rather stumble across it in the game. But some other player might agree with you and pop one out