Comment 5 for bug 896631

>Interesting suggestion but that would lead to random behaviour (sometimes it work, sometimes it doesn't), consistency is better than magic that happens to work only sometimes (random behaviour leads to confused users).

Please note that I (and probably everyone who added startup applications in the past and thus with icons) is in this state of incosistency (look at the screenshot again). Moreover, I do not think it would create much inconsistency:
1) If you add an app that has an icon in unity and so on, if it does not appear, it should be filed as a bug.
2) If you add an app that does not have an icon but should, well, it is a bug once more
3) If you add something else (ie. custom script), you are probably experienced enough to know there is no icon for it. Moreover, there is the generic icon (on my screenshot, the one next to liferea and Parcellite) for this case, so not really an inconsistency there.

If you really strive for consistency, remove the icons altogether.

>What we recommend to do is to dnd softwares from the unity dash to the session dialog, that will add the desktop files will all the infos including a nice icon and a name
Frankly, I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Dragging from the launcher to the startup applications dialog does not work if you are talking about that (nor from the dash).