The following piece of code worked perfectly under 3.0.7, failed under 3.0.8 and still fails under 3.0.9
The server is up continuously so you can run it yourself, the output should be:

Banner: COOKIED mailsys 
Error: ERROR 

$fp = fsockopen("mrelay.frg.eur.nl", 444, &$errno, &$errstr);
                     if(!$fp) {
                             echo "$errstr ($errno)<br>\n";
                     } else {
                             echo "Banner: ",fgets($fp,4096),"<br>\n";                             
                             fputs($fp,"cookie 123\r\n");
                             echo "Error: ",fgets($fp,4096),"<br>\n";                             
                             fputs($fp,"QUIT\r\n");
                             fclose($fp);
                     }