Every now and then I get an email from someone who has been using MICO, and has a brilliant idea on how to make it better (admittedly, I haven't done a large amount of work on MICO in a while, and it's probably due for a bit of attention). Sometimes people are just excited about features that I've announced an intention to build, and want to have some input into how they would use the feature; sometimes it's something entirely new that MICO doesn't do.

Now I welcome any feedback, and try to respond to everyone who emails me (at some point this may no longer be feasible, but for the moment, there's no real issue - I'm not swamped by bug reports or feature requests, so I'd like to think that it works pretty well for everyone who's using it so far). Most of the time, the feedback is in the form of "Thanks for building this; how do I do X?" or "I'm looking forward to Y! I think it would be great if Y did Z, too". They're encouraging, respectful, and give me important feedback about what works for them.

Sometimes, though, the feedback is in the form of The Big Idea. This is related but different to the 'million billion dollar idea' that all free-lance developers (or young developers with 'business' friends) get offered; there's no NDA, there's no offer of revenue sharing, and often the idea comes with the line "I don't mind if you release it for everyone". The Big Idea can be, however, almost as insulting.

So what is The Big Idea? It's often a feature request, made under the guise of a helpful user who's just wanting to contribute. In reality, it's usually a very specific, and often complicated feature which the user needs personally, but which would have little to no use outside of their business. It's presented along the lines of "Wouldn't it be great if MICO had tight integration with <some obscure messaging system>" or "I think MICO would be much better if users were forced to enter <some very business specific data>".

Don't get me wrong, here - I'm not saying that these are bad ideas for you, just that for 99.9% of my users (i.e. everyone who's not you), these 'features' would get in the way, and make MICO useless to them.

I'm also not opposed to customising MICO for someone if they have specific ideas and the budget to pay me for my time, but I find the idea that I should solve your business problems for free just a little insulting. The people suggesting that I should cater to their obscure use case as a core feature, I find even more insulting.

I specifically built MICO to be light-weight and flexible; as easy to install and run as possible for as many people as possible. I shy away from required fields, or tight integration with specific systems because I don't want to dictate a "right way" to use it. The system was designed to replace post-it notes, IMs, and email for the task of recording as much information about a call as possible in the shortest amount of time. If I start adding required fields, then users have to stop and think before entering a call, or they will (and this is much more likely) enter junk data just to push through the form.

When I first started receiving these emails, I would politely try to explain why this isn't a good move for the MICO project, but I would be happy to do the upgrades for them at a rate lower than my regular fee (I built the system after all; I'm happy to make people happy to use it). The responses ranged from "That sounds great, I'll contact you with the details, and we'll start work on it soon" (followed by no further contact), to "Ok, no big deal. We'll figure it out ourselves", to outright abuse about how I built the system, so it's my duty to modify it (and for free, seeing as it's open source).

Today, I tend to reply with a short message about the development plan for MICO, and offer to quote them at my full rate. I no longer try to argue the point with users who think that cajoling or cursing me will change my mind about changing the direction of MICO to suit their needs. I'll also often point them to other task trackers which have more features and complexity, suggesting that they might feel more comfortable with a bigger system.

I love my users - most of them are just plain happy to have a system that works and is easy to use. I love my clients - they offer me exciting challenges, and pay me for my expertise. I don't love the Big Idea people who want nothing more than for me to make their life easier, but aren't willing to invest in it. They show a lack of respect for what I do, and I find that very insulting.

By all means, keep sending in feature requests, bugs, and updates on how you use MICO; I love getting them. Just don't try to give me your Big Idea, and act like you're doing me a favour.