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They listed the design patterns in their book. But did they really invent the design patterns or summarized the works of others in their book? If the later is true then why are they called GOF patterns which credits them for others works?

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Short answer to : they did not universally "invent" design patterns. The label "Gang of Four" (GoF) refers to the four authors — Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides — who published the canonical book that collected and formalized a set of 23 object‑oriented patterns. The GoF contribution was systematizing, naming, documenting, and popularizing those recurring solutions so engineers could talk about them with a common vocabulary.

What the book actually did: it picked recurring design problems from real systems, gave each pattern a clear name, explained the problem, sketched the solution, discussed tradeoffs, and supplied example code and classification (creational / structural / behavioral). That uniform format and the examples made the ideas teachable and re‑usable across projects and languages.

Did they "credit others"? In many cases the patterns themselves were already in practice or discussed elsewhere; the value of the GoF book was curation and exposition, not claiming sole invention for every entry. Calling something a "GoF pattern" is shorthand for “one of the 23 patterns in the GoF book,” and credits the book as the standard reference rather than implying the authors invented every pattern from scratch.

Practical note for readers: reserve “GoF pattern” when you mean the canonical 23 from the book. For other domains (enterprise, concurrency, architecture) look to later pattern catalogs and community papers. As and pointed to background material, this clarifies the key nuance: invention versus formalization and popularization.

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