Basically, I want to take this discussion -- What are Objective Business Reasons to Prefer SQL Server 2012 over 2008 R2? -- and turn it on its head.
We are a small business, and we are struggling with the pricing-structure change in SQL Server 2012. We are essentially running a development server as our production/live server; in other words, they're the same box. Thus we could (until we got legal advice that said otherwise) get away with using a dev. license for it. But our server is pretty high-end, so the per-core license fees would add up to something outrageous. Thus, we're considering moving the server back to 2008-R2. (Or worse, to MySQL or something completely different! if we can't get the pricing problem resolved.)
Our queries and software do not specifically take advantage of any new-in-2012 features that I'm aware of. But of course the backward migration would be quite a large undertaking.
So what do the pros think? Is this a recipe for disaster, or are we not totally insane for wanting to do this? I've listed 2 reasons so far (pricing and non-use-of-features), but I'd like to hear more, on either side of the fence. Thank you.