Comment 12 for bug 819842

Comment #1 is correct. This is the intended behaviour of the system.

When you start a process it is always as a child of another, usually some session. Graphically, you log in to a desktop session. When you start gnome-terminal you are beginning a separate shell session and any programs started in that terminal belong to the shell session [1]. There are good reasons for this design.

Any program can be started in the desktop session, without needing a menu entry. For example, GNOME provides the run program dialog (ALT-F2) for this purpose. If you desire a program to last for the duration of the desktop session, start it using the run dialog and *not* from gnome-terminal.

[1] Some programs apparently take measures to escape from the shell session so that they appear to run in the desktop-session. These are exceptional and should not be considered the norm. If you start a program from a shell session you should expect that it will remain under the control of that shell.