yabookie has a point. An F8 lens on a large format camera is a quite fast lens as the aperture (in mm) is quite large. The same also works in reverse. A F1.4 lens on a Pentax Q is in practice a very slow lens. as the aperture (in mm) is very small.
In practice this means that a 25 mm F2.0 lens on m43 is equivalent to a 50 mm F4.0 on a 35 mm FF camera, with regard to collected photons and DOF and diffraction.
Personally I would not call it a conspiracy though, but rather a fact of physics. But, I assume marketing is not slow to claim that this new F1.4 is very fast, when it in practice is equivalent to a F2.0 lens for APS-C.
This has been discussed for ages on DPR though. And some will go on claiming that F2.8 is always F2.8 and determines how fast the lens is – even though the fastest lenses we have on this planet (giant telescopes) might be F64.
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.