Also a newbie but as far as I know, none of it is 'required', the first few items (name, description, kewords) simply detail your package information. The other items like require, autoload... are what tells composer what packages and scripts your application requires / uses. The laravel install just loads this up with what laravel needs to get going

So for example if you made your own non-laravel project, you might only have the name and description in your composer.json file, until the time comes that you realize you need a package like "phpmailer" for example, then you would create a "require" section and list phpmailer in that.

Or I may be completely wrong and hopefully someone will let me know, but this forum is a deserted wasteland and I have my own post creeping away with no replies so I figured I'd at least jump in with my throughts.

Also, though it's overwhelming for a beginner, you can try and skim through the composer Schema page, which lists out all the different properties you can add on your composer.json:

https://getcomposer.org/doc/04-schema.md

Pretty much Kilrizzy is correct from most of my understanding. I thought I would kind of give a rundown link in case you needed it:

http://daylerees.com/codebright/the-primers

You can jump down the Composer section (unless you need an intro to Laravel or JSON refresher). This is a little outdated at this point(namely, PSR-0 is depreciated in favor of PSR-4), but just in case you needed the info, thought I would give it. If you don't, then just disregard.