[smilliken]

I think it's desireable for there to be a zoo of definitions of life. Life isn't a precise mathematical concept, but a family of related concepts.

Self-replication is almost essential, but it's not hard to imagine a future AI that is highly dynamic, intelligent, etc, but does not create copies of itself.

Metabolism is pretty universal. I'd define it as a process that consumes free energy. Arguably viruses don't satisfy this definition. Computers do satisfy it. Most probably don't consider the sun to be alive though, despite it consuming vast amounts of free energy.

Minimizing internal entropy is an interesting one because it's not objective, it requires a model to define entropy. Something can look to us to be high and increasing entropy because we're using the wrong model to understand it. Viruses are static though, so they are definitely not decreasing internal entropy.