The most important thing is to make sure that all the legislators have heard of Free Software and know what it is. In each country you'll have to decide which level to start with. The UK is very centralized, so we start with parliment even though there are 660 MPs and London cost a fortune.
In Italy the cities and provinces may be more worth while, and everybody can lobby in their home town.
Once you've written to all the legislators (maybe sent them DemoLinux to try), you can work on those who show interest. There are always dissenters looking for a new argument, and in a few hundred you must find some converts. Free software can be linked to almost every area of politics, because IT is used in all areas of government. Once a politician starts talking about free software, it becomes much easier to get the press to debat it.
Politicians are not the only target for cold calling, unions can be good too, especially teachers and healthcare workers. Really the question is how many letters can you write in a day?
Nick H:
....the task of lobbying the Italian govt on this?>
Alessandro Rubini :
It's more easily said than done....
jaromil:
FWIW, i agree on alessandro's pessimism: on the large scale italian government is lobbying with microsoft (is FS dissemination about lobbying really?) and it looks like berlusconi and his collegues are not a 'nice env' to move in.
alltough! a few days ago in pescara, the city i'm born in, the province approved a motion planning to revamp public administration structure using free software, with some guidelines addressing GNU GPL andopensource. IMHO in italy it's more appropriate to think in terms of region/city scale, instead of national scale, to push the idea (and practice!) of free software.
greetings-- jaromil
Nick Hockings
s96121272@op.up.ac.za, s96121272@tuks.co.za, nickh@nupedia.com