Kuala Lampur, April 2 -- Several years ago, I developed a chat application for a research project. Due to budget constraints, I turned the development into a bachelor students' final year project and provided the students with little monetary compensation. To keep costs low in terms of time, money, and technical complexity, we only included the basic features necessary for the research.

However, during user testing, participants kept requesting additional features commonly found in "free" chat applications. Some even requested automatic translation of discussion posts, such as converting Malay and Chinese messages into English for non-Malay and non-Chinese speakers, e.g., expatriates in Malaysia.

But does "free" truly exist? Users may n...