From: Wietse Venema (wietseporcupine.org)
Date: Wed Sep 19 2007 - 05:46:41 CDT

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Bill Landry:
> It seems to me that it is pretty standard for MTAs to announce
> "250-8BITMIME", so what would the "opposite problem" be that they
> are referring to above? What could break if they started announcing
> "250-8BITMIME" with their ehlo reply?

In that case, EXIM would take responsibility for the message. And
when delivering to a mail server that doesn't announce 8BITMIME,
EXIM would have to either:

- Convert 8-bit to 7-bit content, thereby destroying digital
  signatures.

- Return the mail as undeliverable. This is wat some mailers do.

Of course, non-delivery is even less attractive.

With the increasing use of digital signatures, EXIM's behavior will
become a problem because it forces up-stream MTAs to convert
already-signed mail and thereby destroy digital signatures.

In my opinion, EXIM people should just bit the bullet and add full
8BITMIME support. I did it for Postfix in 2002. It took a month
or so. It was not as hard as I expected, and there have been very
few changes to that code since then.

        Wietse

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