Huh. Ok - I didn't see in there where it says the family asked us not to - it says the general policy is not to ask the family, out of sympathy.
However, obituaries in the part of the US where I come from are public record - generally published in the local newspaper. They're sometimes simply called "death notices".
Perhaps it's not the custom in Switzerland? Or perhaps there's just not enough people in Switzerland involved in Debian for one of them to say "Oh, yeah, I saw that in the paper the other day..."
Heck, if you know what to ask Google for, it's not hard to find my parent's obituary online, and they're not of world-wide note, as Adrian is.