No, I will make sure that will be removed permanently.  I will not do this for awhile to avoid violations, but hope that someone else will consider and agree.  There is no reason whatsoever to put "the late" in front of his name, I will list several reasons, and although I think that is somewhat POV, there are other reason as to why I remove the info:
Everyone dies sometime - Does it really make sense to have an article about a past event and just put "the late" in front of everyone that has died?
Poor writing - It's just sloppy/filler writing to put "the late" in place.  Would you ever see anyone referred to as "the late" in a print encyclopedia?
Recentism - WP has a guideline/template that we should try not to capitalize too much on recent events and keep them in perspective.  Would it make sense 10 years down the road to still refer to him as "the late"?  Let's make things as static as possible.
Precedent - At one point, several dozen articles referred to Steve Irwin as "The late Steve Irwin", now, this is the only one that does (by doing a search), and there seems to be consensus about that.
Knowledge of his death - Let's face it, a vast majority of people (especially those that would look for this article) know he is dead, and the few that may not be sure can click the link.  Maybe people don't want to know that he's dead or be reminded of it, and putting that acts as a spoiler.  Even Anna Nicole Smith had a few "the lates" put on pages of hers, and those have all been removed (a few by me, a few by others). "Saving a click" is not a valid reason for this, we should assume that the readers are smart, and things like that can go to the Simple English edition.
Irrelevance - Why would the fact that he is dead be relevant to an article that talks about his programming?  His shows will probably be reran for many years to come, and the fact that he died somewhat unexpectedly makes no bearing on what he did on his programming.

Well, this is my case, I would also like to point out WP:OWN, which I feel has been violated in these reverts.  I also am starting a discussion on WP:Words To Avoid to get some word from other editors to make sure that I am doing the right thing.  I am supremely confident that I am, and I look forward to improving the PETA article in the future.