Familiar Hack

Releasing a public method is done to block other hackers, not to directly benefit them as a whole.

It's making a secret weapon public so your competition no longer has exclusive access to it while you keep your own methods under lock and key. Theirs gets blocked, yours doesn't, suddenly you're the only one who can do it. You win.

That makes sense, but how would they get their hands on the competition's private stuff to begin with? Use someone as a mule of sorts to buy it, then pick it apart and release it publicly?

The other thing would obviously be, they would need to thoroughly examine it to make sure making it public wouldn't lead to their OWN hack getting patched...