Tebbens received a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the
University of Twente, Netherlands. His final research project was in the group of Production and Operations Management led by
W.H.M. Zijm. In 2002 he founded the company xlocal.com, offering services based on
free software to SME companies. Between 2004 and 2007 he presided the working group on
Free/Libre/Open Source Software at
Internet Society Netherlands. Between 2006 and 2008 he was coordinator of the European Commission's FP6-funded SELF Project (Science, Education & Learning in Freedom) to design a platform for the collaborative construction of educational materials. In 2007 he co-founds the non-profit foundation
Free Knowledge Institute together with
Hinde ten Berge and
David Jacovkis to consolidate their activities and mission for a free knowledge society. In 2008 Tebbens co-chaired the Free Knowledge Free Technology Conference, organised by the SELF Project and the Free Knowledge Institute. The Life Long Learning Programme of the
European Commission awards the
Free Knowledge Institute a grant to set up the
Free Technology Academy together with the
Open Universiteit Nederland and the
Open University of Catalonia. Tebbens will lead the project and becomes the first director of the academy. In 2009 Tebbens was one of the co-organisers of the
Free Culture Forum in Barcelona, where he organised and moderated the Educational panel. The main working documents that were produced during the Forum led to the
Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge. Kim Tucker and Tebbens have written a modified version for the Charter from a Free Knowledge perspective, drawing on the various working documents produced during the Forum. The
Free Knowledge Institute has published a summary of that as Ten Points For Change. In 2011 he was programme committee member for the Open Knowledge Conference in Berlin, organised by the
Open Knowledge Foundation. ==Publications==