Is it a bug that build environment properties cannot be configured in master/build.gradle?

We have a multi-project build, using ‘master’ as root project, with this layout:

sub_project1/
sub_project2/
master/
  settings.gradle
  build.gradle
  gradle.properties
  gradlew

We sometimes run tasks in sub-projects, like this:

sub_project1$ ../master/gradlew myTask

When doing this, regular Gradle properties in ‘master/gradle.properties’ are parsed just fine, but the command line properties like ‘org.gradle.daemon=true’ are ignored.

Is that a bug or by design?

It causes us some inconvenience when wanting to set the default command line properties. We have about 50 sub-projects, so duplicating ‘gradle.properties’ in each project is not an option.