Free World

The Free World is a Cold War -era term used by non-communist nations to describe themselves. The term was used to contrast the greater personal freedom enjoyed by citizens of non-communist countries that called themselves Democratic , such as the United States and Western Europe, with the Soviet Union and its East European allies. The usage of this term, however, generally does not take into account the many other non-communist states allied with the "Free World" during the Cold War, most notably in South America, Asia and Africa, many of which have been criticised as repressive and dictatorial.

Because of America's prominent role in the Cold War, the President Of The United States was often dubbed the "leader of the Free World", particularly in the United States itself.

Richard Stallman and the Free Software Movement use the term Free World to describe the set of software, people, commercial/non-profit companies, that adhere to the 4 basic freedoms of Free Software .

So they for example speak of the Free World (note the capital letters) when they refer to a GNU/Linux Distribution composed only of free software and they say that for example some free application that uses non-free libraries can't be run in a Free World, since in a Free World these non-free libraries don't exist. Debian GNU/Linux (the ''main'' distribution of Debian) is a self-sufficient system composed of Free Software, but since the Debian Project also distributes some non-free software, it's not touted by Richard Stallman et al.

In a broader sense, lawyers for example are said to live in a Free World, because they have the freedom to study, modify and freely redistribute legal knowledge, decisions and strategies.

''Free World'' is also the title of a 2004 book by British political commentator Timothy Garton Ash .

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