He had this hack :
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...lay+statistics
I ported it over without releasing it and was wanting to release it pretty bad. I redid the template and turned it into a product. When I went to contact him over releasing it he didn't allow e-maisl to be sent to him, pms were disabled by him, and his site was down. I had no way to contact him. Pretty annoying. Perhaps this person tried the same thing? I'm not sure.
As for the whole can a proted hack be released thing: If the hack is all original code it should be allowed even if it does the exa t same thing as anohter hack.