Orphaned R Packages (maybe this is too inside baseball?)

How do the R "powers that be" handle packages that are orphaned from  
CRAN?

Recently, I was looking for a function either part of the base  
functionality or an add-on package that mimicked the "poly"  
functionality from Octave (http://n4.nabble.com/Re-R-function-that-duplicates-Octave-s-poly-function-td901174.html 
)

Based on that post a helpful R user  strongly  encouraged me to look  
at the "signal" package.
cran.es.r-project.org/web/packages/signal/index.html

Unfortunately, when clicking through on that link the following is  
received:
Package ?signal? was removed from the CRAN repository.
Formerly available versions can be obtained from the archive.


It appears that the "signal" package was part of those contributed  
to 2.8, but was not maintained after that, i.e. is not part of 2.9  
or 2.10:
http://mira.sunsite.utk.edu/CRAN/bin/windows/contrib/2.8/

I'm still pretty new to the package concept in R and how those are  
maintained, updated, deprecated, etc., so any insight about how this  
and other similar packages like this are handled is very helpful.


Thanks again for the great insights offered by all those R wonderful  
R users and maintainers and contributors out there.  It is truly  
great to see a community be this productive.

P.S.  For the time being, I suppose it is okay to continue to use  
the signal package that was contributed to the 2.8 Version until it  
no longer functions properly as the architecture continues to  
advance (which is great).