The problem described in that thread is by and large just a problem with py2exe not knowing what to do with the Qt imageformat plugin DLLs. See this for a more detail explanation: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4573995/pyqt-pyside-icon-display-problem/5643540#5643540

I'm not quite sure the reasoning behind using SVG, if there isn't a good reason then Qt backend should use the .png images as Qt natively supports PNG. If there's a reason for SVG then the problem described is just a quirk of the py2exe and Qt combination that is easy enough to work around when you know what's causing it.

"I'm not quite sure the reasoning behind using SVG, if there isn't a good reason then Qt backend should use the .png images as Qt natively supports PNG." - This is my point, as one of the icons was already using PNG, and this way, if there's no good reason for using SVG, we avoid an extra (non-obvious) dependency.

I applied the changes to the v1.0.x-maint branch, and merged that into master. I suggest you not file pull requests from your master branch, as it has now diverged from upstream/master.