As Lion now supports Resume, does it mean most softwares no long needs starting at login?
Resume is an option that is enabled by the user; if the user doesn't select the checkbox when he shut-down Lion, then the applications will not be re-opened at start-up.
Resume is an option for applications that don't run in background, such as text editors, documents editors, browsers, which are opened when necessary. If also background applications would rely on that, then users would not have any possibility, if not closing all the applications they don't want re-opened by Lion; differently to have a background application re-opened when the Lion is shut-down or restarted, they would also have the other applications re-opened.