Would be best to remove the links that reference usage of files that the op obviously does not own as well as references in the documentation to "archives". 🤣. Everyone knows what you mean, at least you didn't mention "abandonware"
You'd be better off scripting a method for a user to make the game they actually own an "archive" first than using exodos files, TDC or similar if this to be posted here or on the DOSBox sourceforge site.
The script makes assumptions on what is installed on the system which may not be true for all systems so that should be mentioned somewhere.
As far as "different versions of dosbox" as far as these forums are concerned for official support there is just 0.74-3 and earlier and SVN.
I don't see anything different than what a frontend could or should do so not sure what you expect from the official version of DOSBox unless you want DOSBox to offer a frontend or frontend-like functionality across all supported operating systems as well as using EXDOS , TDC or similar files as a reference which likely wouldn't go over well with publishers.
For mounting zip, 7z, etc there likely already is a feature request for it but would have to check.
For those that own the original games the likelyhood of them installing from original media or a backup, configuring the game, verifying the game, compressing the game, veryfying the game are likely minuscule but the feature would be useful for the few that would bother and for exodos and the like.
I also wonder how someone would differentiate between a zip that was intended for mounting and one that was not and how DOSBox would determine the difference without maintaining a database of hashes that dosbox would have to check. More than likely this would be left to the user to figure out similar to how they should know what the error means when they try to load a windows executable in DOSBox.
There is also the issue of poorly configured packages and DOSBox being blamed , of course if they came here they would be turned away for not using the copy of the game they should own.