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Is there any place in RAW that explicitly states that free action can only be taking during you turn? It appears to be implied in several places, but I don't see a place that just says, "Free action may only be taken during your turn or while you acting out of turn with an immediate action. Short speech is a common exception to this."
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It's not so much that it mentions that you can't take a free action on someone else's turn, but that it doesn't say you can.
The only action that says you can is an immediate. On that note "You can perform one or more free actions while taking another action normally". So you can take an immediate action and thus a free action along with it.
Frodo has the right of it. All actions can only be taken on your turn, that is the base line assumption. The only action type that violates this are immediate actions. Attacks of Opportunity are non-actions. Delay moves your actual turn order. Ready is a sort of special case where you can interrupt someone's turn with an action, though technically you act right before whomever that was readied against in imitative order.
In any event, speaking is the only free action you can take on someone else's turn.
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In general, speaking is a free action that you can perform even when it isn't your turn. Speaking more than a few sentences is generally beyond the limit of a free action.
It's not explicit. It is clear by implication, though.
This is an example of "The exception that proves the rule". If it were not an ordinary rule that one cannot take free actions outside of one's turn, then it would not be necessary to specifically call out that one actually can speak outside of one's turn.
Is there any place in RAW that explicitly states that free action can only be taking during you turn? It appears to be implied in several places, but I don't see a place that just says, "Free action may only be taken during your turn or while you acting out of turn with an immediate action. Short speech is a common exception to this."
Free Action
Free actions consume a very small amount of time and effort. You can perform one or more free actions while taking another action normally. However, there are reasonable limits on what you can really do for free, as decided by the GM.
The bolded section states when you can take a free action.
Nowhere in any action exept the description of the immediate action does it say you can take it on anything but your turn.
Also, as you yourself point out, speaking can be done as a free action, even if it is not your turn. That itself reinforces the fact that free actions cannot be taken, normally, in anything but your own turn.
The immediate action was invented to handle the entire concept of taking an action outside one's own turn.
I'd say it's implied by the terms "taking an action" and "your turn" in the context of a game.
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In general, actions can only be taken on your turn. Free actions are actions. Thus, free actions can only be taken on your turn.
Free actions can also be the action designated by a readied action. And, as others have mentioned, speaking is an exception.
A number of abilities, for example giants catching thrown rocks, call for a free action and only really happen when it is someone else's turn. These are difficult to reconcile without also treating them as implied exceptions.
It isn't so much that they can only be taken on your turn as they are typically taken as part of another action. It so happens that immediate actions are one of the few times you can take an action out of turn; attacks of opportunity are the other common out-of-turn action. You can take a free action as part of those actions per the above-quoted text in Gilfalas's post. Otherwise, you cannot.
This gets weird if you start taking "attacks of opportunity" against your allies just to get free actions, so the GM should probably prevent that to keep things reasonable.
Speaking is a free action that can be done out of my turn and other free actions can be done if I take an action. So i can fall prone as a free action if I speak.
Ha! That's . . . accurate, but begging for errata. I wouldn't expect many GMs to go for that, especially as they're empowered to limit free actions as they see fit.
If you find me a GM who would not let you drop prone off-turn UNLESS you speak to trigger the free action, I will show you a robot.
Its likely not to be a problem, but I wouldn't allow dropping to prone out of turn, whether you are speaking or not. I can think of an example where it would be iseful to drop prone but you fail to do so on your turn. Lets imagine your character is in melee with another character near a low wall. You're fighting slugging it out with one another. All of a sudden several archers crest the ridge not far from you on the opposite side of the wall, and they're allied with the chap you're in melee with. You decide now it would be in your interest to drop to the ground rather than being a pin cushion for those archers. If you could drop prone as a free action you could avoid a lot of potential damage, but its not your turn, you already went and now the archers have just moved into position and are preparing to fire.
Asmodean advocate: Because if you simply took the free action out of turn, it wouldn't interrupt the thing that triggered it.
Not that you can actually do it, but that would be a tactical reason to do so.
Edit:
Re: AoO: I concede that this isn't actually a stated action type, strange as it is, so it would not allow free actions. I remember a thread where a designer clarified that you could take actions such as Rapid Reloading an alchemical cartridge or Quick Drawing a thrown weapon during an attack of opportunity; that clarification doesn't really mesh well with the strict RAW but does work better from a gameplay perspective--otherwise, abilities such as Snap Shot would be all but useless unless you use bows.
I maintain that you can take a free action as part of a readied action.