The GLP affects the entire work. If some fancy pants proprietary shop got caught publishing a release that incorporated an AGPL `faker` then a GPL request would render all the source code. This would be a legal nightmare for some places. Have you heard what happens when an acquirer finds a GPL bomb during due diligence?

I'm very familiar with the GPL, I just meant folks would rather find non-GPL alternatives. For a library that wraps a few ANSI terminal codes to enable color and provides a bunch of fake data for testing, I think finding alternatives (or just writing them yourself) wouldn't be hard.

I guess the OP means that it would be too late to replace the AGPL code if the company has already published a version including it. My unexpert opinion agrees with the OP.

I seriously doubt that courts would side with someone who tricks people into downloading code with a different license.

Especially since changing the license of a project from MIT to AGPL doesn't suddenly revoke your rights that you had under the MIT license -- only new code would be affected by the license change.

Yes the solution would be to fork off at the last MIT/Apache licensed version. I’m no lawyer either and would actually be interested in seeing the court case play out.