diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 3b199451..464d876d 100755
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -3,7 +3,8 @@
 #
 # -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
-MAINTAINER := $(shell whoami)
+MAINTAINER ?= unknown
+
 UID := $(shell id -u)
 ifeq ($(UID),0)
 warn:
@@ -228,9 +229,4 @@ PHONY += printenv help done all everything
 PHONY += .print-phony
 .PHONY: $(PHONY)
 
-# this makes sure we do not build top-level dependencies in parallel
-# (which would not be too helpful anyway, running many configure and
-# downloads in parallel...), but the sub-targets are still built in
-# parallel, which is useful on multi-processor / multi-core machines
-.NOTPARALLEL:
 endif
diff --git a/make/environment-build.mk b/make/environment-build.mk
index 2d1cb29c..5d25627d 100644
--- a/make/environment-build.mk
+++ b/make/environment-build.mk
@@ -98,7 +98,6 @@ endif
 # -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 BASE_DIR     := $(shell pwd)
-MAINTAINER   ?= unknown
 WHOAMI       := $(shell id -un)
 DL_DIR        = $(BASE_DIR)/download
 BUILD_DIR     = $(BASE_DIR)/build_tmp