Allegedly Apple's strategy is often to make an offer to buy the company and acquihire some devs who understand the problem and have experience solving it, and if the answer is a no they implement the feature themselves. I have no idea if that's actually true, or if it happens a lot, but it could be the case that being "sherlocked" is what happens if you turn down an offer. If true, that would make being "sherlocked" irrelevant if the plan is to exit by being bought by Apple.