Free World

The Free World is a Cold War–era term for the non-communist countries of the world. The concept included countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Canada, West Germany, Australia, New Zealand and countries belonging to organizations such as the European Community and NATO. In addition, the "Free World" occasionally includes the Commonwealth realms, Japan, Israel, and India.

Origins

During World War II, the Allied powers viewed themselves as opposing the oppression and fascism of the Axis powers, thus making them "free". Following the end of World War II, the Cold War conception of the "Free World" included only capitalist particularly anti-communist states as being "free" and having such freedoms as free speech, free press, freedom to protest and freedom of association.

In World War II, the term free world was used to refer to the nations fighting against the Axis Powers. Such use would have included the Soviet Union, contrary to the later, "Cold War" definition of the term. During World War II the term free countries was used to identify the western allies. During the Cold War, the term referred to the allies of the United States. In both cases, the term was used for propaganda purposes.

Free world (disambiguation)

The term Free World may refer to:

Free software movement

The free software movement (FSM) or free and open-source software movement (FOSSM) is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedom to run the software, to study and change the software, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. Although drawing on traditions and philosophies among members of the 1970s hacker culture and academia, Richard Stallman formally founded the movement in 1983 by launching the GNU Project.

Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985 to support the movement.

Philosophy

The philosophy of the movement is that the use of computers should not lead to people being prevented from cooperating with each other. In practice, this means rejecting "proprietary software", which imposes such restrictions, and promoting free software, with the ultimate goal of liberating everyone in cyberspace – that is, every computer user. Stallman notes that this action will promote rather than hinder the progression of technology, since "it means that much wasteful duplication of system programming effort will be avoided. This effort can go instead into advancing the state of the art".