I came across an interview of Wang Gungwu. He is the famous Chinese – Australian historian. In the interview, he describes how to live a good life and remain cognitively alert (he is answering as a 95 year old).

He described it as always wanting to learn and to be curious about things. He always wanted to share what he learned. He was hopeful that what he learned and shared would be useful to people to come.

So to break it down this gives us 4 core rules to living a good life.

1. Wanting to learn
2. Being curious about things
3. Sharing what you learn
4. Being useful through your sharing to people

The 4 points nicely map comparatively to the four freedoms of the GPL license for open source software. 

Freedom 0: The Freedom to Run the Program
Freedom 1: The Freedom to Study and Modify
Freedom 2: The Freedom to Redistribute Copies
Freedom 3: The Freedom to Distribute Modified Versions