I'd say fire is too simple to be considered alive. Similarly prions and an automobile assembly line. IBM, otoh, is starting to get up there in complexity.
I don't think it's inaccurate to regard a "process" as merely a sequence of causally-connected events, though. That notion covers the sorts of things that biological organisms do, to be sure, but it also opens up the field to a whole host of things that have nothing to do with biology - I think it's entirely accurate and fair to describe a volcanic eruption as a "process", so what we're going to end up doing is discussing where life begins and ends, probably.
I'd say fire is too simple to be considered alive. Similarly prions and an automobile assembly line.
Based on what? Complexity? The number of discrete processes that happen to occur comtemporaneously? My CPU has more transistors than IBM has employees - is it alive, based solely on its complexity?