In recent years hopes of resolving the chaos of color reproduction in open systems and the World Wide Web have slowly become focused on de facto industry standards. Apple Computer led an initiative starting in the spring of 1993, known as the ColorSync™ Consortium, to resolve this chaos. Over the next eighteen months, this initiative produced an open, cross-platform device color characterization profile format specification based on the Apple ColorSync™ profile format and set the groundwork for unambiguous interaction among color devices and vendors in open systems. The following year was spent transforming this informal consortium into the International Color Consortium (ICC), a formal, non-profit organization. The next eighteen months were spent establishing clear goals for the consortium and struggling with intellectual property issues. Following this effort, the last six months have seen the genesis of new work to inventory all known problems with the ICC specification, create a set of reference implementation and establish guidelines for conformance testing. If these initiatives are successful, it appears that the ICC might finally meet many of its ambitious initial goals.As founding chairperson of the ColorSync™ Consortium, color architect for ColorSync™ 2 and recent past chairperson of the ICC, I have been intimately involved in all of the developments described above. I have also been involved in other related open color standards activities. This paper represents my personal viewpoint on these developments and the ICC in general. It does not necessarily represent the official position of the International Color Consortium, Apple Computer or Hewlett-Packard Company.